


light reflects from the shadow

by greekdemigod



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, F/F, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-04 06:01:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20466191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: But then the woman exclaims “Freddy?” and things start to shift in her mind. Her high school nickname unearths memories buried very deep down indeed. Of smoking under the bleachers with John Booth and Samuel Washington, of having a new girlfriend almost every week, of getting detention with John Walker definitely every week. Of her best friend’s impressionable younger sister always wanting to hang out with them and being really, really obvious about the crush she was harboring.That younger sister has done a lot of growing up.“Hey there, Little Walker.”-In the aftermath of her aunt's passing, Anne Lister packs up the shiny, interesting life that she made for herself in the big city and returns to the sleepy little town that she hails from. In it, she finds much more than grief waiting for her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaand we're back, baby! god, how i've missed posting new chapters.
> 
> if you're new here: hello! my name is kay, i write like a mad person, and i post unedited like a man who will die in winter.  
if you've come here off "not all things holy": welcome back, my sweets, i've missed you!

_It’s only temporary._

Dollops of cloud drift lazily past above her, coloring first a peachy red and then a brighter orange as the sun starts to rise. It promises to become a beautiful day today, and Anne Lister is determined to make it a great first day too.

Despite that drive and motivation, she keeps telling herself this is only temporary. Box full of stuff in her arms, she shoulders open a door that has not seen much use in the past few months and gets walloped in the face by dustiness. She finds the nearest surface to drop her load on before succumbing to the coughing fit that strains against her ribs.

It shows that no one has been here since her aunt and namesake passed away. Anne drags her fingers over dusty shelves, walks through a cemetery of dead plants and flowers all wilted away without their usual care.

_Temporary_.

Yet, instead of the pinching agony that has accompanied her for weeks now every time she thinks back to the horrible phone call that reached her in the city forty miles over, she feels only a stubborn pride. It’s the first time in a while she has felt like herself at all.

“I came here for a reason,” she whispers to herself, rubbing a hand across her tired eyes, through her messy mane of hair. It’s a far cry from the fancy lawyers’ office she has left for this, but it’s something she feels, in her heart of hearts, she needs to do.

_The Secret Garden _was her aunt’s second greatest joy in life—her own words. (She has always said Anne and Marian were her first.)

When Anne closes her eyes, she goes right back to a happier time for both herself and the shop. Young Anne Lister with her shorts and her perpetually busted-up knees, the scrapes she always got into leaving their mark, and oh, how she would run and skip through this space under her aunt’s watchful gaze.

She used to always say she would take the shop over if anything ever happened to her aunt. Even at sixteen, busy being her high school’s heart throb, she’d solemnly promised her aunt at her uncle’s funeral, when the idea of death was suddenly not an abstract to grapple with anymore but a reality.

So, she promised. And she could not ever deny her aunt anything, even if the question is issued from beyond the veil.

She will get the store up and running again, and she will find someone worthy to take over after her, so that she can return to her life in London, her friends, and that deliciously exciting new thing she has going on with Mariana Belcombe.

God, she can’t wait to go back.

As she rolls up the sleeves of her shirt and digs into her pocket for a hair tie to bind the locks away from her face, all the thoughts fade. There is just the long list of things she has to do in her mind, and with a hard set of her mouth and her shoulders she starts.

It takes an hour to empty all the pots out into the compost can out back and another to clean all of them for reuse. Another thirty minutes to sweep all the dust, earth, and fallen petals to reveal the tile floor beneath. By then the back of her shirt clings to her back with sweat; she really is not used to physical labor anymore.

Day in and day out, she either sits in her office or a court room, talking. She is great at talking. She runs rings around anyone she wants to. But it does not exactly offer much of a workout and she’s starting to notice that while she may be back to the home town she wanted to put in her rear view mirror at eighteen, she is not back to the same physique.

Outside, the promised warmth beckons. She sets aside the broom stick—only then does she see the blisters already forming all over the palms of her hands from the sheer force with which she used it. Stretching her fingers open aches, so she keeps them loosely clenched as she steps outside.

Monmouth Street is much busier now than it was at seven am. From her perch on the wide window-sill out front, she watches people passing through. Some she seems to vaguely recognize—quite a lot seem to vaguely recognize _her_, whether through good memory or by association to who used to own this store.

That’s another reason she wasn’t particularly keen to ever return. In a town as small as this, everyone knows everyone. Reputation preceeds you in a way you can’t control anymore. Anne thrived in a big city, where she was constantly making another first impression on someone, and it was always, always exactly how she wanted to come across.

She likes to think she has grown a lot from the rough and tumble, messy, chaotic tomboy she used to be. These days, she is _distinguished_. She doesn’t make a sport out of bedding any girl she can anymore. She doesn’t try to show-off and prove herself better than anyone else anymore—okay, maybe a little.

There is a bakery down the street. A little further ahead, a tea shop and a small family-owned restaurant. But what she notices most, and it strikes her as incredibly funny: her neighbor is a tattoo parlor by the looks of it. _Skin Deep_. There is a lot of art plastered to the windows, most of it in very fine lines, black and white, though the vibrant color popping up in some tease and tug at her enough that she gets up from her position to go take a closer look.

The color splashes like watercolor paint. Most capture fantastical imagery: fairies, castles, magic. The combination of fine black lines and intense color that does not stay within the lines is beautiful.

Anne Lister’s body is a temple, no tattoos mar it, but she can understand the appeal of having a piece of art like that immortalized on skin.

“We’re not open yet,” comes a soft voice from behind her.

She spins around to face the source and is pleasantly surprised to find the source to be _hot_.

Shorter than Anne by a few inches, she nevertheless stands upright proudly, and despite the early hours her arms are bare from the straps of her tank top down. In the cut-off jeans shorts and the faintly transparent fabric that sees through to the fiery red bra beneath, she looks like she would fit better at the beach though, not a sleepy landlocked town like Halifax. There is a thin silver septum ring in her nose, and the insides of her arms are scrawled with ink.

Chestnut brown hair tucked behind her ears, falling past tan shoulders. Big, toothy grin. Shimmering blue eyes. Her gaze hitches on that face—there is something so awfully familiar about her, but she can’t place it.

But then the woman exclaims “_Freddy?_” and things start to shift in her mind. Her high school nickname unearths memories buried very deep down indeed. Of smoking under the bleachers with John Booth and Samuel Washington, of having a new girlfriend _almost_ every week, of getting detention with John Walker definitely every week. Of her best friend’s impressionable younger sister always wanting to hang out with them and being really, really obvious about the crush she was harboring.

That younger sister has done a _lot _of growing up.

“Hey there, Little Walker.”

Ann beams at her. “You remember me.”

“Of course I remember you. I remember everything.” She is self-aware only for a second that she looks nothing like the girl she used to be—dashing, cocksure, stupid brave. Time has passed for the both of them. Ann must be similarly well into her thirties by now.

Any visuals she might have retained of what Ann used to look like as a kid, a growing teen, and at least almost an adolescent would have been hazy at best, but they fade away now because thirty looks fantastic on her.

“And I was just admiring the art work. Are those yours?”

A soft, bashful noise leaves her. “Yeah, most of them are. All the lettering is Harriet Parkhill, and we get some visiting artists sometimes, but—_yeah_.”

Anne turns back to the art and looks at it through the new lens of actually _knowing _the artist. She faintly recalls Ann Walker always had notebooks everywhere she went, was found doodling often. And did her brother not once mention getting an elaborate painting of himself one Christmas or birthday?

High school is more than a decade ago and she must dredge all these tidbits up from so deep that it makes her feel old. Years and years of new experiences and choices and _life _are piled too heavily on top of them.

Ann joins her by the window, keeping quiet but stealing looks at her.

“These are really phenomenal. Nice job.”

Rather than replying, Ann ducks away to open the front door and step inside. Then her head peaks outside, all swinging wavy hair and slight flush. “You can come in, if you want.”

She casts one more glance at _The Secret Garden_, but as this town is fond of reminding her, things don’t work the same way here as they did back home. She’ll be fine leaving the shop unattended and the door unlocked for a few minutes.

The tattoo parlor smells of vaseline and disinfectant and a tang of sweet-sharp incense. Glass cabinets line the walls, filled with all sorts of jewelry. Anne walks through the store looking around. Some of these explain themselves, but some really leave her wondering where exactly they go.

She halts, transfixed, in front of a set of rings and studs made out of real animal bone.

Moments later, a Taylor Swift song blasts from the speakers mounted up in every corner, and Ann returns from the space beyond where Anne can just make out two impressive-looking installations. Where the real magic happens, then.

“I was so very sorry to hear about your aunt. She has always been very nice to me.”

Anne is _sick _of hearing it. The lamentation. The forced reminiscing. Guilt and anger and denial and pain all swirl like a toxic cocktail in the pit of her gut, stewing, fuming. Her nostrils flare as she drags in breath after breath to steady herself.

And then she sees tears dot Ann’s long lashes accompanied by a gentle smile and it takes her aback.

“She was so important to me when I was going through rough times, so...” She shrugs her shoulders, seeming helpless for a second, floundering to find words. Anne isn’t in any rush to supply any, finding herself remarkably speechless as well. “I’m glad to see you here to take over. She sounded very fond of you.”

Not only is Ann a part of her history, bygone glory days that helped shape her who she is but that she doesn't think about actively much anymore, but she was right here. Next to her aunt. For weeks, or months, or years.

She likes the prospect of having Ann to go to for stories about her aunt much more than Eliza Priestley.

“Thank you,” she manages to speak, and she also manages to bring forth a smile from the great depths of her sadness. It might be a little fake, mostly plastic, but the sight of it still lights up Ann even further. “I appreciate you telling me that.”

“Of course!”

Anne sticks her aching hands into the pockets of her pants and takes another look throughout the shop before landing back on Ann. “Well, I should be heading back now. Still so much work to do. But I’ll see you around, Little Walker.”

She returns to cleaning up _The Secret Garden _feeling marginally uplifted in her melancholy, but for the first time not entirely dreading her stay here. The seeds of curiosity towards Ann Walker have been firmly planted.

Now to get some actual flowers planted next...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! please let me know what you think as we embark on this new journey. <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay, fam. it's been a few very odd days.  
big shoutout to the sparkly new beta i have acquired though. if you check my comments section occasionally, you should already be familiar with ReleaseTheSheep, threatener of my life and breaker of my bones hopeful.

Here’s the truth: Anne doesn’t know the first thing about flowers, running a business, or any combination thereof. Whenever she helped out as a teenager, it had been to have an excuse to drive her aunt’s scooter. There was nothing particularly exciting about delivering flowers, but it meant some nice pocket money and that liberating feeling of wind streaming into her face and the vibration of the engine gunning beneath her.

She refuses to remember the helmet hair, or the insects flying into her mouth. Those make her rosy-colored memories a little less glamorous.

All thinking back to those days does, though, is make her feel the sadness rear up to crest inside her once more. And maybe it makes her itch to bring her motorcycle back from the city a little.

She drops the key card on her table and drops forward onto the plush, neatly made-up bed. With her face buried in the soft sheets, her body continues to ache in all the places it can, and her thoughts keep whirring.

Theoretically, she understands it all, of course. Supply and demand, keeping stock, garnering more patronage through going the extra mile, that sort of thing—she  _ gets  _ that. But she finds the reality of it a little more daunting than she had expected. For the moment, it seems easier to focus on just getting it up again. Contact her aunt’s usual suppliers, post updates on the Facebook page that she had begun to set up—the thought of her aunt struggling with technology makes her happy and hurt at the same time.

Curling up, the abyss gapes wide within her.

She should’ve been here more. She would know more if she’d just been here a little more often.

Those thoughts will lead her nowhere, so she tries to stave them off. They have been running in the same groove whenever she lets them, dug deep by now. It takes her a lot of will power to wrench them in a different direction and the only thing that breaks her completely out of it is pulling up her text message archive with Mariana.

She will think more on how she wants to tackle this in the morning.

The take-out options in Halifax are abysmal, but the hotel has no restaurant and she can’t cook in her room, so she orders a simple pasta and hopes for the best. Then she settles herself on her back on the bed, boots kicked off by the end, and spends the next couple of minutes thinking of the absolute best opening line to restart this conversation with.

She gets sidetracked a little, scrolling up through flirty texts, late night texts, and texts that don’t involve any words at all. Mariana really is beautiful—a mix of pronounced and soft lines, of gentle caring and sharp witticisms.

There is nothing around to stimulate her. Generic wallpaper, generic paintings hung up against them, generic furniture. It is nothing like the flat she used to live in, all wide open space, sleek modern furniture, lived in. She looks around and nothing sparks anything in her beyond, “ _ You would make this place lighten up, baby _ ”, but she’s not sure she wants to entertain Mariana  _ here _ .

She goes downstairs to accept her order and still hasn’t come up with a good thing to text. They left it off on such a promising note, but that was before she cancelled the date they had lined up, fell into the sinkhole of grief, buried herself in work until her time off started, and moved forty miles away.

Anne is not sure she can find something to say that’ll smooth all of that over.

With her pasta in her lap, she starts flicking through the Facebook page of  _ The Secret Garden  _ instead. It’s only a handful of posts advertising the flower of the week, a new arrangement style her aunt was trying out, and a discount coupon for the group’s followers.

Her chest is stitching together in tightness, a weight that climbs up and down using her rib cage as steps. Sometimes, breathless, a squeezing in her lungs. Sometimes, a heavy feeling in her stomach, nausea. She leaves most of the pasta untouched.

Her eyes hitch when she sees a particular someone comment on one of the posts, saying  _ ‘going to pop in for a few of these lilies later, they’re BEAUTIFUL’ _ . Her profile picture isn't much more than a mane of chestnut hair and a sliver of sun-tanned, freckled skin, but Anne doesn’t need to look at the name next to it to know who it is.

Only then does she realize they’re still friends from a very long time ago, granting her access to her profile.

Nothing wrong with looking, is there? It has been an awful long time since she has last seen Little Walker, coming onto a dozen years by now. She was still a blonde last time they spoke. Her curiosity doesn’t need much more prompting than that.

There are a lot of posts on her timeline about the parlor, which is understandable, but she is not lacking in the photo department either. A whole album dedicated to a trip to South-East Asia with some pretty girl named Catherine Rawson, another to all the ink work she has done so far.

Anne scrolls through her album of profile pictures for long enough to eventually get back to the angelic blonde. She must’ve had the new color for some time. Old profile pictures show more of the Catherine girl, as well as some with relatives. A fond smile touches to her lips as she sees John Walker, a few years older than when they graduated, holding a baby.

“To hell with it,” she thinks to herself as she goes to their chat conversation. Nothing has ever been said in it, or—well, she vaguely remembers some conversations. She remembers at least one drunken night where she hit up Ann to fend off her own boredom, but no trace of it remains here.

Maybe for the better. She was a bigger asshole back then.

_ [Good evening. It was very nice running into you today. Would you want to get a drink sometime and catch up?] _

She goes to tab out of it, but sees the message shift to  _ seen  _ immediately. The corner of her mouth and one of her eyebrows rise simultaneously. The smugness at still having this effect on Ann Walker is a tangible thing that sits low in her gut.

It takes a few more moments before Ann sends her three messages back in rapid succession.

_ [howdy, neighbor!] _ __   
_ [that sounds like a great idea.] _ _   
_ __ [when are you free?]

So beneath all that new bling and the new look, Ann is still as eager to be around her as she was when she was fifteen and Anne and John first started hanging out? That’s good to know. She can work with that.

The image of a young Ann Walker comes to her then, filtering in slowly. The short skirts, the teen magazines, the shy giggles. The earnest, big puppy dog eyes when asking if she could join them where they were lying on his floor similarly flipping through a magazine—though of a much different kind.

She had always found Ann annoying in the same way she found her own younger sister annoying, which meant not all the time but often enough. At least until the crush became apparent, and then suddenly she became a person of interest.

It had been great fun to toy with her a little, see hope and longing flit across her soft features.

But Ann is not that girl anymore. Kind and honest, sure, but not inexperienced and naive and shy anymore, surely.

_ [Do you have any plans tomorrow after work?] _

_ [no! c:] _

_ [Great. I’ll swing by when you close for the day?] _

_ [perfect!] _

And just like that, she finds a small beacon of hope to make her next days not entirely unbearable. It even lifts her self-esteem back to its unbearable, cocky standards and like the impact of thunder, something undeniably smooth flashes into her mind.

So she exchanges Ann’s chat for Mariana’s and gets to work getting them back on track—she wouldn’t mind receiving another photo to keep her company in this lonely hotel room and she is willing to work for it.

* * *

Morning breaks too soon, but not as harshly as it would in the city. Birds chirp and there is a distinct lack of traffic sounds as she stirs awake. Only her arm pokes from beneath the covers though, feeling around until she manages to snooze the alarm on her phone.

There are some upsides to this new job then: she’s her own boss, so she gets to set her own hours.

Every slightest movement hurts—tugs at sore muscles, pulls, aches. She rolls over onto her stomach to press her face into her pillow, seeking after the elusive sleep that is trickling away from her steadily.

With a soft groan escaping, she realizes her mind is very much awake already even if her body wants to slumber, and it’s always mind over matter with her, isn’t it?

Messy-haired and bleary-eyed, she pushes herself up and shakes the sheets off. Padding across the carpet, her rampant thoughts return in full force, sweeping her up into the formidable sensation of being awake.

The pipes groan and creak for a second before they start pouring out hot water. It helps a little with the back pain and the calves, but mostly it keeps her tethered on the edge between wanting to go in late and being dedicated to get started as early as possible.

A slow smile curls as the conversations from yesterday start to flash into her conscious mind.

There are some other topics on her mind throughout breakfast, naturally, and for the five minute drive into the town proper, but mostly Anne is thinking about the wonderful coincidence of running into Ann. The wonderful coincidence of having her as her neighbor. She’d had no idea, but then again, even when she did visit she hadn’t been in it to see the shop.

Her eyes trek across town. Between neat rows of houses in the residential areas, picture perfect lawns and picture perfect families, she can see the tall peaks of Shibden Hall break through the linear rooftop line.

She’ll have to go. She has been trying not to think about it, but it still lurks in her subconscious. There is so much to sort out there, to be packed up and donated, to be salvaged, to be saved forever. Normally so eager to tackle things head-on, she finds such stubborn reluctance to visit the place where her aunt passed away.

One hand clasps loosely onto the steering wheel, the other is against her chin, index moving back and forth over her bottom lip. Better to focus on Halifax around her—all its greenery, its small people. Here are still the same families that were here fourteen years ago when she decided she wanted more for herself and got the hell out of dodge, aiming herself at college and whatever came beyond.

She’d been a missile, and where she had exploded she had landed. London is many things, but predominantly, it is home. She misses it as she layers the city over the town and Halifax comes out sorely losing in that comparison.

But Halifax is other things. It’s quiet and peaceful, at least, a soothing balm on her wild emotions. It’s familiar, only minimally changed in all those years. In this moment, she appreciates its stability.

Finally she pulls up in front of the  _ Garden _ . There is no one there to scold her for being much later than yesterday, or to tell her to get to work. She takes one look through the front window and decides that since she  _ is  _ the boss—one thing she could very much get used to—she can be even later and get herself some decent coffee first.

She turns her back to all that she has left to do and crosses the street to the bakery. Instantly she is wrapped up in good things—warmth, cinnamon, flour, hospitality. She takes one long look at the glass case containing pastries, thinks back to her sorry excuse for a dinner last night, and ends up splurging on a big cup of cold brew and a Danish. The Sowden family waves her out with a big smile.

The church bells sound ten am. Her eyes flick across the street to the lights going on behind the  _ Skin Deep  _ window, and two pairs of legs stumbling around the place most likely getting ready for the day. When she has crossed over to where their doors are mere feet away from each other, she realizes her error.

It’s not stumbling, it’s  _ dancing _ . They’re blaring something top forty that she hasn’t heard before, but the upbeat tempo is still catchy. The girl dancing with Ann has sweeping waves of honey blonde hair tumbling down her back—must be Harriet, the letterer.

She leans against the entrance, unabashedly looking in. They don’t notice her until they’re a few minutes in, zigzagging between the glass cases full of jewelry.

“Oh, Anne, hi.” Ann grins sheepishly and darts over to the radio to turn it down a little.

Harriet takes one look at her, then swivels around and beelines for the backroom. She hears the clinking of metal on metal and the whirring of some kind of machinery.

“Good morning.” Now that she’s presented with the opportunity, she might as well take it. “Want to share this pastry with me? I’m not that hungry, but when I see something delicious I have to get my hands on it.” She runs the tip of her tongue lightly against the inside of her bottom lip, thoughtfully marveling at how Ann seems to notice, but where she would have flushed in the past, she keeps pretty steady now.

Might she pose a little more of a challenge this time around? Beautiful. She adores the thrill of the chase.

“I’d love to. Outside though, if you don’t mind. We have a policy against bringing in food and drinks.”

“Certainly.” Anne gestures for Ann to step outside first and she follows, even if that means sitting down on the sidewalk with her. Ann doesn’t seem to care about any of it—she has the same sort of casually carefree look to her today, down to the loose shirt that waves in the breeze and the slapdash mix of necklaces around her neck that tinkles like a wind chime.

She tears the pastry roughly in half and hands Ann the larger part, trails her fingers along her wrist when she pulls back. Ann gives her a smile that is as sugary sweet as the treat they’re about to dig into.

They sit in silence for a while, shoulder-to-shoulder, munching. 

Anne leans back on an arm, and uses the vantage point to her advantage to check out all the ink work that she can. From a perfect circle around her right elbow, a mandala branches out in curving and wavy lines, none straight. On the inside of her right wrist, a semicolon. On the inside of her other arm, a bunch of flowers contained to a triangular shape, and beneath it the words “I am, I am, I am”.

Sprinkled between them, the scars and blemishes and freckles of a girl so wonderfully alive.

“Like what you see?” Ann is honest to God  _ smirking  _ at her. Not Little Walker anymore for sure. There is a quiet self-confidence shining through that is new, and incredibly fucking hot.

Anne replies with a smirk in kind, slowly sweeping her eyes up and down Ann’s body now that she is being watched closely. “Definitely.”

For a moment, all Ann does is look at her. Shadows shift behind the clear blue of her eyes, but what it means, Anne does not know her intimately enough to guess. The smirk remains though. “Good. If you ever want some ink done, I’d love to get my hands on you.”

Ann leaves her in a flurry of pomegranate soap and tinkling necklaces, carrying with her a sweet promise that tonight should shape up to be very,  _ very _ interesting.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you might have seen the rating bump up. this is not for this chapter, but at one point in the future most likely. :p

There comes the moment, a little past three in the afternoon, when there just isn’t any more cleaning to do. Her hands are chafed red from handling the broom, from mopping the floor until every tile shines. A few tufts of hair have fallen in front of her face, but in her concentration she only gets to swiping them away now.

Shelf upon empty shelf against the walls. The racks and tables have been pushed to the sides and stacked together. No point in getting everything back into position if she hasn’t contacted any suppliers yet. No point in calling them if she hasn’t decided how she wants to run this thing yet.

Getting started right away with making the place presentable had been a no-brainer, busywork to keep her mind blissfully quiet for a couple of hours. She stands in the middle of the empty shop, every inhale of air tasting of tile polish and citrus, and has to face the fact that she will need to start figuring out all the rest first.

The back room is a confined space compared to the main shop, with most of it taken up by a desk and a few filing cabinets. Most of her aunt’s business, however, she knows to be wrapped-up in a thick, leatherbound journal that inspired a younger Anne to start a diary—because that’s what she thought it had been.

It takes her only a few seconds of rifling through the desk drawers to find it.

The leather is soft and pliable in her hands, worn with age, smooth to the touch. It has golden stitching, but no embossing, no other decorations. The first several dozens of pages are alphabetized and contain a long list of contact information. Her heart twists when she finds Marian and herself under L. She is not surprised to find Eliza Priestley in there, despite her aunt and Eliza practically spending every day together.

A soft breath of frustration escapes her as she types the contact information into her phone. Eliza is an indispensable resource, she just needs to get over herself first to utilize it. A couple more days and she will humble herself to call.

There is one person in particular that catches her attention. Eliza Raine has the most modern business card in the whole journal, metallic golden print on dark grey stock paper, and the brochure filed behind her information contains amazing pictures of all sorts of flowers.

All of her experience comes from buying girls flowers, but she sees the staples she would expect and a collection of exotic flowers that catches her interest. Long, elegant fingers trail across the pages, ghosting over names, color variations, and rarity.

Setting the journal aside, but kept open on Raine’s place within it, she opens and closes every drawer of the filing cabinets until she bumps upon 2019’s invoices so far. Skimming through, she finds a few of them belong to _For A Rainey Day_, but not many.

Might she not take a little risk if she is to keep open the shop from now on? She imagines her aunt’s main supplier must have been reliable and, well, _enough_. But Anne wants a little more. Something a little exotic for Halifax’s tastes to really make her mark.

She saves this Eliza’s contact information as well. And she calls her up, while shifting in the chair so that she can hoist her feet up on the desk, crossed at the ankle, whipping side to side. The connection rings for a while before her voicemail message starts.

_“This is Eliza Raine’s cell. Please leave me a voicemail and I will return your call as soon as I’m able.”_

“Good afternoon,” she drawls into her phone. The low, warm voice and the lilt of a foreign accent have conjured for her a lovely image of a woman, that she envisions with her eyes closed as to not have to speak into a void. “This is Anne Lister. I have taken over _The Secret Garden _in Halifax, Western Yorkshire and I would be so glad to have some of your time to talk about our business relationship. Give me a call at this number and I would be delighted to speak with you.”

She runs out around four to find the nearest shop that’ll sell her a notebook, and by eight her hand is cramped, her stomach rumbling, but she has gone through most of the filing cabinets and made extensive notes.

This she can do. This is how she got through her pre-law undergrad and through law school and through trying to make it into a decent law firm: research, planning, studying. But she is still glad to get out of her chair and be able to leave it all behind for the night.

She is still shaking the kinks out of her neck and shoulders when she locks the front door and closes the shutters in front of the windows. The lights are still on at _Skin Deep_ and faint music is trickling out into the quiet Halifax evening.

Harriet is sitting by the counter, lazily tapping away at the computer set up there. She does not deign to avert her attention towards Anne when she enters.

She spends a few minutes taking in the proffered jewelry some more. There’s studs and plugs cut from actual gemstones, stone, bone, and wood. A pair in particular catches her eye because they’re spun from glass, but the size of them is much, much beyond the simple earring holes she got pierced when she was thirteen.

Anne has never had any intention of getting any piercings either. She likes them well enough on others—especially lip and tongue piercings add a nice touch to kissing, and nipple piercings are _hot_—but on herself? No, no, she’s perfect enough as is.

The door to the section beyond the store opens up and there’s Ann Walker, a skinny redhead in tow that’s marveling at the fresh ink done on her wrist. It sits nicely wrapped in cling film, but even through it and from afar Anne can see bold strokes and a few dashes of color.

The girl pays, thanks Ann again, and then hurries out of the shop. Her hazel eyes flicker over Anne briefly, with muted interest, but not long—and Anne looks away from her and back to Ann rather too fast, anyway.

“How has your day been, Miss Walker?”

Ann grins up at her from her perch on a stool and swivels around for good measure. “I’ll tell you all about it ten minutes from now. Just let me do some administrative things real quick and then I’m all yours.”

She can definitely spare a few minutes to that result, so she resumes her browsing while behind her fingers drag across keyboard keys and a conversation is had in hushed whispers. It is tempting to try and eavesdrop, but it would be too obvious being the only one under these bright lights.

Her wandering has brought her to the belly button piercings aisle when Ann sidles up to her and chirps, “I’m ready to go!”

They set out, two polar opposites huddled close together. Anne is in all black, a black _Starset _shirt tucked into black jeans, black Doc Martens tied up firmly. Ann has a cherry red bomber jacket on over a white lacey dress, feet tucked into a pair of bright pink Converse that are almost falling apart.

“So, your day?” Anne implores. Their hands aren’t fully clasped together, but they’re nudging and grazing, knuckles dancing but not waltzing.

“Oh, yes, right. Pretty great, actually. I booked an Expo a couple of weeks from now. It’s all rather exciting. I’ve never been to anything like it as an artist rather than a visitor.”

Anne smiles as she folds her hand over Ann’s and squeezes it. “Congratulations. Where is it?”

“New York!” Ann sighs wistfully. “I’ve always wanted to go, and now I get to go for _this_. It’s an amazing opportunity for me, but I’ll have to save up a lot to make the most of it.”

“Say no more. Tonight’s my treat then, to celebrate.”

“No, that’s not—”

“I was going to try and pay for you the whole night anyway. Pretty women don’t have to pay in my company.”

Ann’s mouth sets in a tight, stubborn line and blue eyes flash up at her with an edge of steel. She notices the proximity between them lessen.

_Huh?_

She doesn’t have much time to dwell on it as they enter the town center and bump upon the strip of Halifax that is still lively past eight pm. There’s the Italian restaurant that Anne has vowed never to order from again, and a couple of pubs criss cross across from each other, and a greasy-looking food joint that was hers and Samuel’s favorite place to score fries because of the addictive home-made sauce.

Ann drags her into one of the pubs. It’s nondescript in every aspect, yet most tables are spilling with people. There’s three different card games underway and by the counter, a long line of men sitting on the bar stools are watching a soccer game on the tiny tv hooked up on the wall.

They settle into the corner booth. The table is sticky and stained, the leather groans underneath her. Not a fancy sort of place at all, but it does not even attempt to disguise that fact. It is a little charming in that regard.

Anne reads through the menu card and is glad to find a small section of food and snacks. Again, no fine palette, but she’ll happily take it. A nacho platter sounds unbeatable right now.

The woman that comes to take their order is rotund and matronly, with a grin so wide it looks cheshire. She is a smoker, that much becomes clear when she rasps every word and grows hoarser when she laughs. Ann smiles with such glee at every joke she tells.

“And for you, dear?”

“Oh, I’ll have the same, and a platter of your nachos, please.”

“Of course. It’ll be right up.”

Two very dark beers are put in front of them minutes later. The foamy collar is the width of her thumb and clings to both their upper lips when they take their first sip.

Their genuine, belly-aching laughter breaks every bit of awkwardness there could have been.

“The first time I came here was with John. We got so drunk we practically had to crawl home.” Ann tucks her hair behind her ears and only then does Anne get to see how laden they are with metal. Stretched ears, small studs right next to them, delicate rings at the top of her shells, a thicker ring clasping around the side of one.

Ann Walker has hung up art on every stretch of her being.

She is the opposite of the girl she used to know, and Anne is mesmerized by it.

“The first time John and I got drunk, he had just learned he made the school soccer team. He was so happy.” Anne folds her hands around her glass, pressing her palms into the cold surface. “He does not still live in Halifax, does he?”

Ann shakes her head, short hair sliding along with the movement. “He moved up north a couple of years ago.”

“Right.” Some smaller, more northern town than even Halifax was. They had once been so similar, but John hadn’t evolved in the same way—he’d deployed, apparently, and come back glad to be in a quiet sort of place. A safe, sheltered sort of place. She can’t begin to imagine the things he must have seen to change him like that. “As long as he’s happy there.”

“I think he is. With the kids and the wife and all that.”

“Yeah.”

A silence descends upon them until their nachos arrive. Then, between crunching and chewing, they tentatively delve into actually talking about themselves. Ann fills her in on two years of art school and figuring out that it wasn’t for her, that she wanted to use her creative talents in another way. “Then I met this woman—God, what a woman. She had more inked skin than bare. Such beautiful works. When she let me undress her that night, it felt like I was unwrapping a present.”

Anne leans back, still slowly sipping her beer. She’s taking in every single one of Ann’s expressions and gestures, enthralled by how expressive the woman can be when she’s passionate about something. Her eyebrows do quirk and her curiosity grows when she mentions that woman though.

She’d not pegged Ann for a one-night-stand kind of girl.

“What happened?”

“Never saw her again.” Ann licks the salt from the tips of her fingers, sucks a little harder on her index. “Not the first time that has happened, so whatever. I knew then that I wanted to put my art on people, to have it living and breathing and carried along. So that’s how all that started.”

What a woman that must have been.

“What about you? You got into law, didn’t you?”

“I did. I’ve been practicing for a little over three years now and I _love _it.”

“I remember you being very fond of hearing yourself talk.”

“Hey now.” Anne nudges her foot against Ann’s beneath the table. Ann grins sheepishly at her, but fire burns behind her eyes, dancing little flames of joy. “That’s not _all_ there is to it—I also like arguing, thank you very much.”

Ann’s cheeks dimple with every smile, and her lashes are thick and dark and flutter upon her freckled skin with delicate flourishes. Over the years, Anne has forgotten what an exquisite creature she is.

But once upon a time, she was aware. And now she gets to be again.

They cycle through two more stout pints and do away with the distance, Anne sliding around the booth until she’s sitting next to Ann, shoulders nudging together, their knees bumping.

“Do you remember when we were younger—” _So much younger_, she wants to sigh, but then she’ll just feel old. Her fingers drum against the side of her glass, a rhythmic _tap-tap-tap_. “We would always watch so many movies when I was spending the night at your place, and John would fall asleep and start snoring halfway through the first one, but not you. Not us two.”

She’s not even sure why she’s bringing up her brother still. Back then, it was because of him that she hung out with Ann at all, but it’s not him sitting next to her now, smelling heavenly of soap and salt. He could not evoke from her the desire to cause smiles that his sister does.

“All my movie taste and knowledge stems from those nights. I still swear by Indiana Jones because they used to be your favorite.”

Anne grins at this lasting effect on her, although she thinks she would’ve much rather influenced Ann’s music taste. Still, it’s something, and the thought flutters low in her belly.

“We should do that again sometime if you’re up for it.”

“I would love to. If my hotel room had a TV, I would invite you right now.”

Ann frowns, sizing her up with a tilt of her head. “Hotel room? You’re staying in a hotel room?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well—” She would answer, but the words stick in her throat. Instead, she makes a gesture with her hand as if whisking something away. “Doesn’t matter.”

“At my place it is then. Let’s go.”

“You taking me home after the first date?”

Ann scoffs, elbows Anne in the side. “You wish. This wasn’t a date, bucko. You’ll have to do better than that.”

_Oh_. Feisty.

The evening air is much cooler when they leave the comfortably toasty bar, and the distance Ann physically puts between them makes it even more keen. Anne huddles inside her coat but keeps watching the other from the corner of her eye, wondering, _playing hard to get or genuine?_

They go for a brisk walk to Ann’s home, only occasionally jostling their elbows together.

Ann sweeps her hair out of her face and bends to the lock to try and jam the key in. Her street’s deep within the residential area, where lantern lights shut off past ten pm. Anne watches her quietly, follows behind into the narrow hallway.

They tramp up the stairs and Ann lets her into her apartment on the first floor. It’s all a little crammed together, but purposefully so. The living room blends into the kitchen, with the counter and kitchen island separating the two. There’s several bookcases narrowing down the space even more, laden with books and graphic novels on one side, albums and movie cases on the other.

Anne drapes her coat over the back of a kitchen chair and perches on the back of the couch to be able to take a proper look at all Ann has on display.

Remarkably little art, she notes, but there is more to the apartment than this room. She’s sure she’ll track it down eventually, once she gets let into the inner sanctum.

She feels Ann’s presence instantly when it comes to hover behind her. Her warmth invades all her senses pleasantly. Her soft cheek rubs to Anne’s as she settles her head on her shoulder. “You choose.”

The choice is made instantly. The first movie they ever watched together sits three shelves up, slightly to the right. “How about _The Breakfast Club_?”

“Perfect.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my sincerest apologies for the delay on this. i think i started this too soon after nathaag when really i needed a longer break, because looking at it today showed me all the trouble i had with writing this had nothing to do with the story itself.
> 
> since i am still doing daily prompts, i'm not sure when the next update will be, but it'll be a lot faster than this. 😂

It’s impossible not to spend half of the movie glancing over at Ann. They’re a modest distance away from each other on Ann’s extremely comfortable couch. Anne is slouched down so far she is only an inch from being stretched out fully, draping the entire length of her body across three quarters of it. With an arm under her head, her line of sight is at the perfect angle for subtly checking out her companion.

It’s funny that fourteen years ago, when they watched this movie together for the first time on a rainy Sunday (like Halifax has many a year) in the Walkers’ living room, it had been the other way around. Any time she tilted her face sideways to whisper some commentary to John, she would catch another pair of blue eyes looking her way.

It wouldn’t be until a few weeks later that Anne strategically positioned herself so that there wasn’t another Walker between them. Usually, that meant she was on her stomach on the carpet and, often, she would tug Ann down to join her there—at least so that the other would share her blanket with her.

There are no blankets now, and only gazes in the opposite direction.

Ann bites her lip a lot when she concentrates, apparently. And sometimes, when she is particularly engrossed, her fingers come up to her ear to twist at the plug pierced through it, twist, and twist, and twist, and then tug a little on her ear lobe.

“Is Allison still your favorite?” Anne smiles up at Ann as she asks the question. How perfectly in character it had been for Ann to feel so strongly represented by the outcast—then again, had she herself not taken to Bender instantly, finding his distinct lack of respect for authority and his confrontational nature something to aspire to?

“Of course not. Have you seen Molly Ringwald?”

And yeah, that’s fair.

An hour and forty minutes have never passed quite so fast. Anne feels nostalgia sweep through her as she hums along to _Don’t You Forget About Me_, feet tapping along with the drum. Ann’s head is gently bobbing along too. Even when the credits start rolling, neither of them move beyond those self-contained movements.

Anne jostles around until she’s lying on her side. With her head propped up on her arm, she murmurs, “You know, I never forgot about you all those years.”

“Oh yeah?” Ann looks down upon her, and for the first time since they’ve known each other, the power dynamic between them does not feel as set in stone. Used to be, Ann held such soft devotion for her in her eyes. Now the steel returns. “Great way you had of showing that.”

“Well, I—Ann, look at me.”

But Ann does not. She gets up from the couch and busies herself with shutting off her television and returning the disc to its proper case to its proper place on her shelf.

Anne swings herself up and onto the back of the couch—a little clumsily, but at least she doesn’t tumble off and make a bigger fool of herself. “Ann, hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just don’t want to hear whatever smooth thing you were going to say to try and defend yourself.”

“I—” Her mouth snaps shut as the words register. Defend herself from _what_?

“It would be lost breath on your part, anyway. I’ve forgiven you.”

_Forgiven_? Confusion and displeasure jolt into place as she listens to the other woman speak. This turn of the conversation is definitely one she didn’t expect, leaving her floundering to try and catch up. Her face, however, remains a careful study of open attentiveness. None of her emotions make it into her expression, the way she likes it.

Finally Ann looks at her. She leans against the bookcase, her hands wringing together behind her back. “I get it. You had to go off and be great elsewhere, and you did that, and I’m so proud of you that you accomplished what you set out to do. But don’t expect me to be the same as you left me.”

Ann is very quick on the draw. Maybe Anne _has_been underestimating her since she returned—and before she left, too, if she’s being honest.

Twelve years is a long time to get over a crush and reassess a person.

“Okay. So what do you want me to do?”

“Oh.” Ann visibly deflates, the annoyance cooling down already. Obviously she expected to have to dig in her heels and have an argument. Anne makes note of that. “Well, I want you to stop being so flirty.”

“Done. No more flirting.”

“Yeah, you say that, but I don’t know if you’re _capable_of not being a smooth asshole.”

Anne scoffs. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”

Ann wraps her arms tight around herself, but her chin is lifted up in the air, a confident tilt to her face. “I would really like to be your friend, Anne. _Just_friends.”

“Then that’s what we’ll be.”

In her long thirty-two years of friendship history, Anne has rarely been friends with women. Inevitably it turns into more, or it turns sour, or it just _turns_. Vere must be her only female friend right now and the reason that might survive is because she is already married, but even then... It’s not like she’s been talking to them much since she moved out here, so does it really count?

But—Ann Walker. Her new friend.

Old friend?

Doesn’t matter. _Friends_ . Not like she was _that_interested in her anyway.

“It’s getting late though,” Anne remarks, glancing out the window into the pitch black night. “Time for me to head home."

The lip biting is back, Ann worrying it between her teeth as she frowns and looks out the window. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not afraid of the dark.” _And the walking will do me good._

So Anne leaves. Hands in the pockets of her coat, shoulders hunched up against the slight chill of the late hour, she marches through Halifax, her mind going a thousand miles per hour in catch-up. She thought Ann would make an easy conquest, she’ll admit that—in the privacy of her own head.

Someone to have a bit of fun with as she settled back in Halifax for a while. A perfect blend of familiar and new. Appetizing. Interesting.

But it is not to be. That grates on her nerves—she does not like being told she can’t do something, or can’t have someone.

Friends. Just friends.

Okay, yeah, sure.

Ann would’ve become dull and provincial to her. Maybe she’s just dodged a bullet. Maybe this is the best thing that could have happened to her.

She thinks about Ann Walker the entire way to the hotel, carries the blonde with her as she climbs the stairs and storms into her room and aggressively undresses herself to get into bed. Before she falls asleep, she shuts off her alarm. The flower shop can be managed at an hour far less early for once.

* * *

The next day goes much the same way—minus the rejection. And the next. And the next.

They settle into this new routine quickly. In the mornings, they work in their respective shops. Eliza Raine did not prove as exciting as her business card, by virtue of the wedding band on her ring finger and her unpleasantly off-kilter vibes, but at least Anne is slowly getting into business. Between this budding friendship with Ann Walker and her continued flirtation with Mariana Belcombe, she has no time for another lady anyway.

All in due time.

When she closes on the _Garden_ for the day, she takes the seven steps to the front door of _Skin Deep_. The buzzing of the tattoo gun is a familiar background noise to her by now. None of the gleaming silver tools are unknown anymore. She has no desire to hop into the imposing chair just yet, but her view on tattoos has shifted since getting to know a tattoo artist so well.

Because they hang out. A lot. After work, they go places. England’s very common rain showers have most often forced them inside though, so that Anne’s Netflix account is now perpetually logged-in on Ann’s laptop.

They have been continuing Ann’s movie education with great dedication.

They still sit on opposite sides of the couch, but between the snacks and food they keep between them, the running commentary, the discussions, and the idle chatter, the distance between them feels neglectable.

Her opening hours have started to mimic Ann’s. When they’re together, time fades away and nothing else seems as important, and then when she finally gets home at night, it’s too hard to switch on the early alarm again.

Given that barely any customers have been trickling in so far, it doesn’t really matter to her. Both she and the store have enough savings stored away that she can afford a slow start. A very slow start. Not really an official start at all.

Whatever.

She’ll figure it out.

* * *

She does have a breakthrough two weeks in—once she gets over her surprise that it has been two weeks already. It has not felt like two weeks. It has not felt like any time at all.

_Today is the day._

Her hands are digging into her hair, nimble fingers—pads slowly getting calloused from the manual labor, the handling of barbed stems and hefty bags of soil—dragging across her skull. Sitting on the edge of her hotel bed, she has the revelation.

Like an avalanche, it starts with a single, creeping thought. _I can’t do this alone._She is not made for the polite small talk of a vendor, for managing the daily tasks of a store. It is not her passion at all. The past two weeks have made that abundantly clear—they have given her a new appreciation for having achieved her dream of practicing law, and she knows she will have to return to it in some capacity or not be happy.

But she can’t abandon the shop, she can’t give up her aunt’s dream either.

So, she will need someone. It makes sense, when she thinks of it—or maybe her arguing, persuasive mind is turning against her, posing appealing arguments to justify wanting to take a step back. She is convinced nevertheless that she must have been too preoccupied with thinking she had to do it on her own—_she_will say something unkinder no doubt.

Because there is one person that should be part of this, really. Equally invested, equally mourning. Someone with actual shop-running experience… or what was it, she had never quite paid attention to her when she was talking about her career, given how uninterested Anne was in it.

She would have to grovel. And make promises. And swallow her pride.

But Anne needs her sister.

Like a band-aid, she will have to go over to her and get it over with, rather than trying to apologize for a small decade of being rather more busy and self-absorbed over the phone. Marian will not give her time to get any words out, knowing her.

No, she must go there herself. Appease her sister, ply her with compliments, get her to move back to Halifax as well.

Should go great…

With an overnight bag, just in case, packed away in the trunk of her car, she makes one last stop at _Skin Deep_before setting out on her trip.

"Morning." Harriet has not arrived yet, allowing the two Annes to have some privacy within the shop for once. "I've come to say goodbye."

"Have you?" Ann's mouth is set in a hard line; she looks just a little daunting glaring up from the gleaming piercing gun in her hands.

Anne quickly puts her hands up, grinning in an affectation of sheepishness. "Just for a day or two. I am going to visit my sister in Market Weighton and plead her to move into Shibden Hall with me."

"Oh." The way Ann brightens up, the sour twist of her features and cloudy gleam in her eyes dissipating, reminds Anne of snow thawing. To Spring flowers beneath. _Beautiful_. "Okay. Do you want me to keep an eye on the shop?"

"Oh, sure. Yes, that was why I stopped by."

"Right." Ann moves from behind the counter and saunters up to her, punches her - surprisingly painfully - in the arm, then hugs her. "I'll miss you too. Be safe."

Anne hugs her back, thinking, _silly girl_, but also thinking, _this feels nice_. She can't remember the last time she hugged someone like this—with Ann so solid and warm against her, soaking into her, melting. It lasts long enough to make her feel sheltered, cherished. Her eyebrows crease as reluctance to detach wells from her gut up to spread throughout her whole body.

Leaving is not as easy as it once was. She is not as happy to leave Halifax in her rear view mirror as she expected, but she'll blame that on trading it for an even drearier, duller town.

Marian ought to forgive her on the spot for making her come to Market Weighton...


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder that if you want to be kept up to date on when i am working on this story (and when i am working on other things), you can follow me on twitter over at @ofbatwoman!
> 
> hope you enjoy! 😊

Market Weighton knows six thousand inhabitants and no excitement. The town is overrun by market stalls today—Anne is pretty sure Marian has told her, on more occasions than one, that this is a weekly thing to occur, but it had been such a dull conversation that she had put it from her mind. These temporary passers-through are the only loud thing about this town; they’re hawking their wares, chattering away loudly, laughing heartily.

Everything else is so _quiet_. The town is a bore to Anne Lister already.

She has parked in front of a coffeehouse that seems to double as a pottery studio, a curious combination that, if she wasn’t out here on a mission, she would be inside chatting up the owner to figure out _why_. Why mess up a perfectly good cafe with pottery?

Although… there _are_ some beautiful ceramics visible through the front windows, so she might have to stop by on her way back later just to check if this is not a winning combination instead.

Her thoughts stray to every sight just a fraction of interesting, clinging to it as it keeps her from mulling over the impending confrontation with her sister. Her hour long drive has afforded her enough time to do that already.

Might be that she’s avoiding the nerves that squeeze in her gut, so very uncommon for her. She is daring-do. She doesn’t do _scared_. But as she marches through the narrow, winding streets of Market Weighton, something close to trepidation does settle in her chest.

Because the truth is: she needs this to go well. She needs to get her sister on board with her, so that she isn’t relying solely on Ann Walker to make relocating to Halifax worthwhile.

With the collar of her coat fluffed up against her neck, her hands deep in her pockets where they trace over the circular form of her key ring, the sharp edges of her keys, and the outline of a phone that won’t stop buzzing with incoming texts, she continues the short walk through the town in search of her sister’s small abode.

It’s one of the arguments she hopes to pull Marian over the line with: she is living in an awfully small house with her husband and son. Shibden Hall would be an upgrade in every regard, but especially for the young boy, who should be able to play outside, build forts, trek over the hills and through the forests.

Halifax has better schools. More after-school programs. Boy scouts. An actual library.

But even as she cycles through her arguments to birth some more, Anne knows that it won’t be those arguments that’ll win her the discussion. At least once upon a time she knew her sister pretty well.

The sky is overcast and as dreary as she feels. The wind has a surprisingly sharp bite to it, finding its way beneath her layers to raise goose bumps all over her skin. Every house that faces her is tiny, square, with the door and upstairs windows like a face devoid of emotions.

There will be an outburst of color in every window-sill and front yard come Spring, but currently all the flower beds are empty and the undecorated, plain house fronts make for a sad display.

Anne hurries along until she is stood in front of a house that would have been forgettable if it wasn’t for her only sister living there. One among many similar houses, the brown brick blends into one long row of houses that can barely be told apart.

Eagle-eyed, she spots a few toy soldiers stalled out in front of the living room window, a cream-colored couch a few feet away from that same window, and there’s a pair of boots out by the front door that her nephew must have forgotten to take inside.

He must be elementary school age by now, but Anne hasn’t seen him since he was five. She has been so busy. Always so busy. The excuse rings hollow as she tries to picture what Tyler looks like now and comes up blank. A mop of brown hair, last time. Gap-toothed smile. Intelligent eyes.

But what was she supposed to do with a five-year-old anyway?

Firmly shaking herself, she magics a smile back onto her face and saunters up to the front door. No time like the present to make up for all of it. A few weeks of living together at Shibden will wave it all away.

Marian does not make her wait. Seconds after the shrill bell tears through the house, she’s there swinging open the door. The smile that was there, eager and excited, dissipates instantly in the way only Anne is able to.

“You.” As far as greetings go, this one is not bad. Anne had half expected the door to be slammed into her face. “What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like, Marian? I am not here to sell you anything, that’s for sure.” It’s out before she can help herself—being a smartass around her younger sister has always been her natural instinct. She can see how sourly Marian takes it, too.

_Shit_, she’s not off to a good start.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about and I thought it was best done face to face.”

Marian’s hand tightens on the side of the door, fingers curled around the wood. Anne studies her sister’s expression—so open and readable as always. There is doubt there, a lot of wariness, but sprinkled within enough hope to kindle Anne's as well.

“Alright.” With a huff, her sister steps aside to let her through. “Take your boots off.”

Anne a year ago would have been an ass and stomped through with her boots still on, but now the request seems sensible to her. She kneels to unlace them quickly and set them aside on the welcome mat before following her sister into the living room. There is no longer an explosion of toys across the floor. There are no more hand-painted art works on the wall. Instead, there is a small trophy on the mantle and a framed photo of Marian and her son.

The smell of patchouli is almost suffocating, but Anne grins and bears it as they continue on and end up in the kitchen. With a window cracked, she can breathe again.

“Tea?”

“That would be lovely, thank you.”

She is quiet as she watches Marian fill the kettle with water and put it to boil. There is some more ice in her sister’s expression as she turns around and stays by the counter, as if she’s used the momentary distraction to remember all the bad things Anne has ever done.

“Shoot.”

“Sure, yes. So…” Anne clears her throat. She is ready to launch into her whole spiel if necessary, but the bags beneath her sister’s eyes are too pronounced, the wrinkles by her eyes and mouth more defined than they are on Anne, who is several years older.

It takes her aback to see it. She knows hard living when she sees it. And then it dawns on her, the distinct lack of a certain someone's presence in the house...

“Where’s John?”

“_Ah._ Well. If I’d known you were here to talk about _him_, I wouldn’t have let you in.” Her sister’s bottom lip trembles briefly. “I don’t want to hear you say you told me so.”

“Wait, I’m—Marian, what _happened_?”

The two sisters hold a tense eye contact for long, drawn-out moments until the whistling of the kettle breaks it. “Don’t make me say it.”

Anne is out of her chair and by Marian’s side in the blink of an eye, hand settling underneath her elbow to tug at her. “I promise you, Marian, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But you look sad and tired, and—” They used to be so good at talking to each other. Back when Anne hadn’t gone off to London and school and a bigger life yet. She’s starting to see a common denominator here in all her strained relationships. “I know I haven’t shown it very much lately, but I still am your sister. I care about you.”

Marian ducks into her arms, shoulders shaking heavily as she pushes into the hug. There is nothing for Anne to do than wrap her arms around her and rub her hands soothingly over her back. The crying takes a while. Marian is all big, heaving breaths and tears squeezed through her shut eyes. Her breathing is ragged when she pulls back to compose herself.

“He left me a few weeks ago.”

“Oh Marian.” She puts her sister’s face in her hands and leans forward to kiss her on the forehead. “He never deserved you. You are too good for him.”

She ushers Marian into a seat and pats her on the shoulder one more time before taking over tea duty. Steam spirals up in columns from the spout and the surface of their cups when she pours it in.

In true British fashion, they feel some of the weight from their shoulders lift as they sip their tea. Anne had forgotten that too, how cathartic the beverage could be—it had been all coffee and stimulants while working her long hours away in her dorm room, her office, her apartment.

So maybe small town life is good for _something _after all.

“You really didn’t know?” Her sister’s voice is small, contained. Anne shakes her head. “Then why are you here?”

She reaches across the table to take Marian’s left hand in her own. “Halifax. Shibden and the store. It’s not right that I don’t have you by my side for all of it.”

A spark of anger flits into Marian’s eyes and then leaves it again.

She hadn’t even considered how her sister must have felt about her aunt’s will. It had been a considerable sum of money that Marian got, but nothing of the emotional value in the way that Shibden Hall in particular held.

Fuck. She really should have thought this through some more.

“Shibden Hall needs more family members to fill it up or else all that space goes to waste. A backyard for Tyler to play in, maybe get a dog… Halifax has better schools, and more people that you know, and—” Her sales pitch isn’t working. Not enough. The more words fall from her mouth, hollow in Marian’s regard, the more she can see the warmth and hope retreat. So she swallows past the pride that is lodged in her throat and mutters, “And I _need _you. I can’t do this, not alone.”

“You need _me_?”

Anne has never needed anyone in her life. Not their parents. Not her sister. Not her friends fighting her battles or her co-workers helping her get ahead. She has always been so independent, and showboating, and rising like a superstar. How many times Marian has flung those words at her head, she has lost count.

But now it’s time to shut her ego up.

Her throat actually hurts, constricting as the emotions well. Her shoulders ache with the last two weeks. She did not realize how heavy the burden was becoming, unbeknownst. Shibden Hall looming over the city all that time, promising fresh waves of difficulty and pain.

“I need you. To run the store with me. To make Shibden home again. I’ve hated being there—for the most part. It’s not all bad, but it’s not… the life I would have chosen for myself. But I think with you there, and Tyler, it could be better.”

Marian’s eyes are fixated on her cup as her fingers rub nervously along the rim. “I don’t know…”

“You can think about it. Figure things out. There’s no deadline on my asking you to join me in Halifax.”

Silence descends anew in the small row house in Market Weighton, two estranged sisters sat across from each other. Then Marian sucks in a deep breath and looks up. “Want to stay for dinner and see Tyler?”

“I would absolutely love to, Marian.”

* * *

Tyler is an explosion of chaos as soon as he comes in through the back door, babbling about three topics at once and dragging his muddy sneakers over the kitchen tiles. He still has the mop of brown hair, messy and fussed from the walk through wind and rain, locks standing upright from the crown of his head.

His uniform is mostly neat and tidy, but at the front a corner of his dress shirt sticks out cheekily from underneath his sweater.

He shuts up instantly when he sees his mother is not alone, then practically jumps into Anne's lap with what would be a hug if he wasn't a jumble of sharp bones in a skinny frame smashing into her.

And off he goes, now directing his stream of thoughts at her. Soccer practice and geography class and he's learned his first words in French, _bonjour _and _au revoir_.

He has grown tremendously since she has last seen him. Tall, dark, and growing into his handsome indeed. He has aunt Anne's nose, and many of his father's features, but, and this touches Anne more than she thought anything could, he also looks a little like her.

DNA. How odd and fascinating, all of it. She has missed the feeling of being around family.

“How long are you staying, aunt Anne?”

God, that hurts. Of course that's what she is to him, never mind that _aunt Anne _is someone else to her. The wound keeps gaping, keeps being torn to shreds every time she starts to heal.

“Just for tonight, I'm afraid. But we might be seeing more of each other soon, if you would like that.”

“Yes,” Tyler nods, looking solemn. Then his whole face brightens up with his smile, no longer with missing teeth. “Will you take me to the planetarium when we're there?”

She briefly wonders how Tyler knows about the planetarium in Halifax, but she's much more intrigued by his interest in space. “Definitely. Have you ever been to one before?”

“No, Mom said we would sometime but I don't think she likes planets like I do.”

“I like planets very much, so you and I will go one day and then your Mom can do something else that she finds fun.”

That thrills him plenty. Over the top of his head, Anne looks at her sister, whose endearment and affection is obvious. A small smile is aimed her way.

“Tyler, take off your shoes and go set the table.”

“For three?”

“Yes, for three.”

Tyler speeds off, and moments later they can hear the clattering of cutlery and the sliding of plates.

Marian looks over at her and chuckles to herself. “You never used to even talk to him like he was an actual person. I see you're changing, Anne. It's nice.”

It's not a _yes _to her offer (yet), but Anne will allow herself to be cautiously optimistic. If she can beat all odds and survive a day in Market Weighton with her sister and a kid, well, then there is nothing she _can't _achieve.

And for that one night, she regains the feeling of having a family as they sit around the table eating, talking, and, since it is impossible for the Lister sisters to go a long stretch without, bickering.

Anne finds herself already yearning for Marian to move in with her as soon as she steps one foot outside.

“I will ring you up tomorrow to talk about it some more, okay?” Marian calls after her.

A self-satisfied grin accompanies her back to her car and all the way to Halifax.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been loopy on cough syrup and strong pain killers all day, so i hope that isn't too noticeable this chapter 😂😂

When Anne texted her the night before saying she wouldn’t be opening the store for a few days, could Ann keep an eye out just in case, this was not what she expected the result to be. But she can’t deny that the sight of Ann trudging up the driveway towards her is a welcome one.

“You really didn’t have to,” she says, but it’s perfunctory. She _likes _having Ann around.

Ann shrugs—only then pulling attention to what she’s wearing. A somewhat faded grey shirt underneath a pair of dungarees, a garment that would look childish on most but on Ann it looks _very_ cute. There’s the bomber jacket she is familiar with by now, but it’s the bandana she likes best, tied around her hairline and knotted at her forehead.

Anne is used to women in suits, exquisite dresses, revealing skirts, lacy things. That she reacts so viscerally to the simple clothes Ann adorns herself with is… interesting.

“I know, but I want to. That’s what friends are for.” She looks up at the mansion looming above them, grand and stately as ever, but vacant. “And I didn’t want to let you do this by yourself.”

Cleaning, or facing the memories of her aunt? Either way, it’s appreciated.

Without further ado, she summons up the ring of keys from the depths of her bag and unlocks the front door. Dust hits them in the face instantly, a fine layer atop everything. Each room they move into smells sort of stale, devoid of fresh air in the months it has been since last people passed through.

They start by opening every window wide. The cold steals in along with the fresh air, but it’s not unpleasant. Already Anne can feel herself starting to choke up at how thickly the memories are infused into every nook and corner, but the chill helps.

“How long's it been since you were here, Anne?” Ann's voice is gentle, not judgmental at all, but Anne does let the unspoken accusation sting.

_Too long._

“More than a year ago, I'd wager.”

“Right. I know where everything is, so you stay put.”

Ann does move like she knows her way around. After a few minutes of letting Anne stew in her angst, she returns with the vacuum cleaner, a bucket full of cleaning supplies, and a small portable radio. “Though we might have some fun with it.”

So accompanied by a rock station, they set to work. Ann vacuums up as much dust as she can while Anne follows behind with a bucket of soapy water and a cloth.

She has a good view like this. Ann dances with the vacuum cleaner, sashaying her hips as she goes. Anne, sitting back in her kneeling position, has never seen anything more attractive than Ann being her earnest self.

Sweat builds quickly beneath her flannel. Rolling up the sleeves only goes so far to alleviate the heat from exertion that sits trapped against the fabric. The top button goes first, several more later.

She binds her hair back into a hasty bun when they get to the kitchen.

“Marian is moving here. With her son. Sometime around the Autumn Half-Term, so it's not too difficult with Tyler's schooling.” Happiness filters through her tone, bright and easily detectable. When she got the news yesterday, it took everything not to burst into a giddy smile.

She is just undoing the last buttons on her shirt to let it fall open when Ann turns to her, saying, “Really? You must be—oh...”

This is a move that she has consciously done a few times, since being confident about her body is usually a turn-on. The faint outline of what were once impressive abs is barely visible beneath the beads of perspiration dotting her skin.

Ann's cheeks flush, though she averts her gaze to try and hide it. She resolutely sets to her task anew.

If this _had _been conscious, she would be smug. Now, all she can think about is how she promised there would be no flirting.

She wipes her stomach off with a side of her flannel and continues, brow knit in concentration.

Never before in her life has she cleaned with such fastidious dedication.

The house is big, but eventually they run out of cleanable surfaces. The floors and walls are cleans, dust removed from the furniture. There is just her aunt's room left, full of stuff, and the kitchen and pantry to be sorted through.

Her knees crack and her lower back twangs with pain when she gets up. She realizes she hasn't once thought about her aunt again since entering, too wrapped-up in thoughts of her companion and how she is supposed to navigate this friendship.

“I’ve got it from here if you want to head to work.”

Ann shakes her head, smiling gently. “I have no appointments on the book. Harriet can hold down the fort.” She extends her hands to take the bucket from Anne. “I’m good to keep going if you are. Maybe we should clean out two rooms for your sister and her sun?”

She likes that. Focus on the new people that’ll be moving here, rather than the one she lost. So that’s what they do.

For the remainder of the day, they lug around boxes and crates of stuff, a mismatched heap of stuff put away under sheets, wall decorations that are no longer needed. A lot of the wallpaper in the unused is peeling, but Ann promises she’ll help Anne paint some other day.

She is _warm_. In her belly, in her chest, in her cheeks. Ann has the damnedest effect on her.

“The least I can do for all your help,” she mutters as she stretches out her arms, shakes the kinks from her shoulders. Onto her toes, she pulls herself taut until she can feel something pop in her back and some of the ache lessens. “Is treat you to some dinner.”

“I refuse to put on anything nice tonight, so you better be fine with ordering in at my apartment?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Ann leaves first so she can take a quick shower before Anne arrives—she tries not to think about that too much, but the vision of Ann in the shower supplies itself.

For a few minutes, all she does is stand in the living room, breathing in the clean scents of citrus soap and mint floor polish. A burden is not so heavy when shared, but in the quiet moments alone, it’s like the weight of the world bearing down on her shoulders.

“Oh, aunt Anne,” she whispers as her fingers settle on the mantle, now dust free. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” There was supposed to be more time. So much more time. Her head starts spinning as memories filter in of all the times she cancelled plans because something else took priority—_too often_. The drive to Halifax had seemed too long. What was she supposed to do in this shoddy town for days on end?

But they were supposed to have more time.

When she comes back to her senses, her eyes are burning with unshed tears and her lungs are constricted, making every breath a painful affair.

“I’m so sorry.”

It does her much good to go outside into the cold, to be forced to think about something else. The guilt remains, the shame, the self-loathing. It stews and boils in her gut. The toxic fumes curls all around her, chaining her to her emotions.

There is no escaping this, just working through. It’ll be something she will have to live with for the rest of her days.

Ann’s hair is damp and resting against an oversized white shirt that falls to her knees. “There you are.” Her calves are a little distracting. So is the loose fabric doing little to disguise she is going bra-less. The part of her that’s an unrepentant lesbian is coming out swinging for the part of her that’s grieving. “Come in.”

“How do you feel about sushi?”

“I feel _great _about sushi.”

By the time they are seated on Ann's couch, Anne has put in an order at a decent sushi place a mile out of town. It'll take longer to get here, but neither of them feels particularly up to cooking anymore.

They settle into their normal, except Ann sits much closer to her than usual, barely an inch of space between them. Her bare knee slides until it rests against Anne's clad one.

She takes control of the Netflix account and puts on a show they've started watching together, but her mind refuses to absorb any of it.

Ann is _so close_. It's comforting. Distracting.

There’s laugh tracks. Pretty faces. Witty lines. Their sushi arriving, Ann gone to get it. Ann returning. Then there’s Ann’s legs folding over her lap, and Anne getting to rub up and down her calves, calloused fingertips pulling the stress of the day out of them with gentle touching.

There’s a soft sigh escaping through Ann’s parted, rosy lips. There’s blue eyes looking up at her, the television screen little squares reflected in them.

“You are thinking too much.”

Anne scoffs. “Am I now?”

“Yes.” Ann shovels a piece of sweet omelette nigiri into her mouth, wielding the chopsticks like a professional. (Anne keeps forgetting about the pictures of faraway travels she’s seen on the other’s Facebook. She should ask about that sometime.) “Stop it.”

“Who says I can?”

There’s soft fingers trailing over her cheek, then flicking at her cheek. “You can, you’re just being dramatic. Watch the show with me or else, Lister.”

A wide, toothy grin forms as she drags Ann into her side and kisses her within her messy hair. “Stop busting my balls, little Walker.”

It’s nice, this thing that they have. She hasn’t had this genuine of a friendship since she was friends with Ann’s older brother, so it’s a poetic sort of full circle, except Ann’s hand is resting against her thigh and the slow drag of her knuckles every time she moves is a slow torture.

She gives back in kind, of course. Her arm is slung around the back of her, and she continues her massaging on her neck and shoulders, fingers slipping beneath the collar to feel warm skin and the expected lack of a bra strap.

Ann melts into her. Like this, she has no capacity for being sassy. She’s just a tired, smiling girl.

“You’re going to put me to sleep.” Her voice is a sleepy drawl, all quiet and a little raspy into the quiet surrounding them. Then that damned laugh track again, but the moment remains encapsulated between them.

“Wouldn’t be the worst thing, would it?” Anne counters, arching an eyebrow. “You’re tired.”

“Mhm, but I like this.” Doubt crosses Ann’s face. Just a flicker of it into her eyes, into her eyebrows, into the set of her mouth. But to whatever result, she seems to have decided. Her palm glides over Anne’s cheek, holds her like that. “You really hurt me and I didn’t think I could ever forgive you, but now here we are.”

Anne takes that in stride as much as she can, although having it spoken so plainly strikes _hard_. For a moment, she can’t even breathe, it impacts so hard. Of course there had been an inkling that all her best intentions might have caused hurt instead, but... foolishly, she believed she left everyone better than she got to them, despite or even in particular those of very brief contact.

She folds her hand over Ann’s on her cheek and squeezes. “Thank you.”

They both have more conversation in them—things that should have been said twelve years ago, things that are dying to come out—but Ann really is tired and so is Anne if she’s honest. When Ann gets up and tugs her at her hand to follow, she couldn’t even reject the proposition if she wanted to.

Ann’s bed is even more comfortable than her couch, a wide mattress heaped with several blankets and a veritable pillow trove. She shoves some of them away to make room.

They start a good distance away from each other, reminiscent of high school sleepovers. The sheets rustle with all of Ann’s indecisive tossing and turning. Anne has almost slipped away to sleep when she feels a tentative hand reach over and feel her out, patting over her arm and shoulder to find an anchor point.

Her head presses against her sternum, nestling against her front.

Anne wraps both her arms around Ann and pulls her more firm.

Neither lasts a moment longer after that.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, whoa. i went to reply to pgoncpaulo's comment about how i've been having the worst writers block ever, noticed i had half of this chapter still in my ao3 drafts, read through it, and promptly finished it. and now the muse is back for this story like WHOA.  
so thank you, pgoncpaulo. and thank you everyone for being patient with me.
> 
> i can't promise i'll be back to updating regularly, but i sure am going to try!

Waking up has never been such a slow, luxurious affair. First there is warmth, of smooth thighs pressed to her own and the blankets sheltered tight around them like a cocoon. Then comes the deep, even breathing of the person tucked into her embrace, and the faint but gentle smell of coconut rising from her skin.

Light filters in somewhere to the left of them, a faint autumn morning light.

Anne can’t remember the last time she slept this well. Most of the soreness has gone from her muscles already, washed away by something jittery instead.

Breathing in shallowly, she keeps her eyes closed and focuses on the sensation of every place their bodies touch. There is no holding back from either of them, no self-aware rearranging of their limbs. They’re folded together as close as they can. It’s comfortable.

She should cuddle more often.

Right behind the edge of her darkness, Ann exhales, her hot breath weaving through the fabric of Anne’s shirt to tickle her across the collar bone. She bites her tongue, but is unable to resist sneaking a peek.

Ann is demure when she’s asleep, less of that bravado that she has strung up onto her slender frame. Familiar. They’ve been here before, haven’t they?

She was so much younger. Ink wasn’t etched into her skin yet, but neither was life’s worst. Her hair was longer, a wild lion’s mane of it, always bouncing around her.

There isn’t as much bare skin for her to see this time, but even dressed Ann Walker is a sight for sore eyes on an early morning.

It is tempting to let her hands wander. Slip them under that shirt, reacquaint with all the freckled, smooth skin she knows is treasured away beneath. Maybe knowing just that is what makes it harder to just be friends.

Would she still try to hide like she did back then, her furious blush beneath her hands as she trembled? Would she make those—

The next breathy exhale is accompanied by a slight distancing between them as Ann slowly rouses from her slumber as well. She stretches her arms out before she opens her eyes and smiles a wide, beautiful, sleepy smile up at Anne.

“You’re not gone.”

Her voice is a little coarse with sleep—every rasp adds more tension to Anne’s neck.

“No, I’m not,” she confirms, setting her hand in an innocent enough spot high upon Ann’s arm. “Thank you for letting me stay.”

“Of course.” She combs her fingers through her hair, yawning. “I’m not entirely selfless, you know. I sleep better against a warm body.”

Anne chuckles, then puts a hand over her heart and faux-gasps. “Did you just use me for your body?”

“Sure did. But I don’t think you would have said no if I asked.”

Her next breath bursts from her with an actual surprised chortle, eyebrows raising as she takes in those words. Little Ann no more. But she likes this bolder, brighter Ann. This non-bullshit-taking Ann. “Right. I wouldn’t.”

“Good.” Ann pats her cheek in a way that would be patronizing if it wasn’t for the kindness pouring from her smile. “I’m going to make you some breakfast now.”

And off she goes. Anne can’t say she minds watching her walk away very much, but left in the other woman’s bed by herself does little to help her get rid of the thoughts swarming her. She was pretty good at keeping them at bay, locked far away, up until now—now that she’s had Ann soft and warm in her arms, it’s impossible to forget about the night they spent together once upon a time.

_No_, she tells herself, willing the flashes of memory away. She rubs her fingers through her eyes until stars spark against the black of her eyelids. Tracking her sight across the room doesn’t help either, because she keeps catching things that were in her childhood bedroom as well—the dream catcher dangling from a fraying leather strap in the corner, the surfer movie poster that Ann had not seen before but liked the imagery of.

Anne has never thought so much about the past as since she has been back in Halifax. It used to be all about _the now_, and even more the future. Go to the bigger, better places. No time to dwell on the past.

Things have turned around on her in more ways than one, it seems.

With great effort she hauls herself out of the comfortably warm bed, the blankets sliding off her as she gets upright. “Do you need any help with the food?” she calls out as she makes her way out of the bedroom and into the living area.

Ann is standing behind the counter, whisking something in a bowl. “No, I’m all good. If you want some coffee though, you could make some.”

“Sure, I’ll do that.”

They move easily enough around one another, Ann preparing eggs for breakfast and Anne making a pot of coffee to wake them up for the day. She has no concept of time beyond the fact the sun’s out and shining, and she isn’t really paying any mind to the long to do list that she’s been dragging along with her for weeks, never once getting to the bottom of it.

Their morning meal is spent in relative silence. Ann eats in bites and drinks her coffee in sips, everything measured and small. She doesn’t look fully awake at that, and Anne catches her gazing into nothing while blinking sluggishly more than once.

With her hair a mess and her shirt slipping down one shoulder, she is so viscerally real, Anne feels her longing shock through her. She has become so used to the perfectly put-together women that she has been chasing that every imperfection in Ann makes her all the more intriguing.

Her pulse flutters in her wrists. A shiver slides beneath her skin.

“What are your plans for today?” she asks between her own measured, small bites to mimic, mostly, her pace.

Ann thinks on that for a bit, holding the steaming mug still in front of her face. “Work, I’m afraid. I can’t blow off two days in a row. That would set a bad streak.”

She looks like she is about to say more, but just then her phone rings through their serene morning. The annoyance that seeps into her face disappears just as fast, replaced by softness, when she looks down at the name on her screen.

“I have to take this.”

“Of course.”

All Anne catches is a _‘hey’ _so gentle it knocks the wind from her lungs. Ann leaves the door to her bedroom ajar and the temptation to go eavesdrop a little rises forcefully from the depths of her, but Anne stays put instead. Every swallow of coffee lands too heavy. Her foot taps away against the kitchen tile, soft thuds of her sock against marble.

Some of that must be displayed in her expression, because when Ann walks in her eyebrows quirk and she smiles sheepishly. “That was Cath. My ex-girlfriend.”

Her mood should not lift this much over the addendum of _ex_.

Ann’s blue eyes search something in her face, and then, with a great sigh, she settles back onto her stool and says, divulges, _shares_, “We’re sort of on and off, actually.”

She stays her tongue there, but Anne can read it plainly in her scrunched-up expression that she wants to say more.

Maybe Anne is not the only one with too few friends to confide in.

“If you want to talk about it...”

Ann studies her for a good while, eyes darting across her to take in whatever she is looking for, and then she shakes her head minutely. “I’d rather not spoil our pleasant morning.”

“Alright, if that’s what you want.” Anne gets up and moves over to her, wrapping an arm around her briefly before going to refill her coffee. “Do you mind if I come pester you a bit later? I could use your expertise in colors to help me choose the paint for my nephew’s bed room.”

“Absolutely.”

When she looks back, Ann’s smile is an explosion of radiance, illuminating baby blues and the slight red flush on her cheeks. She is breathtaking.

“Okay. I should get out of your hair then. Let you prepare for work.” But she drawls the sentences slowly, hoping Ann will interject that she has changed her mind.

She hasn’t, but she looks at least a little sad about it. “Yeah...”

So after Anne rapidly changes back into her clothes, they say goodbye. Ann doesn’t close her front door until Anne has sped off in her car, clutching the steering wheel to keep herself from turning back. Her body roars with almost feral arousal.

As she sets about her day, she is left wondering what about Ann Walker has her so intoxicated.

* * *

With a paint color fan deck and a bucket of tools in one hand, Anne awkwardly types out a text to Ann with the other.

[_On my way now. Need anything?_]

She has just locked her phone when it already vibrates with an answer.

[_Just you._]

And then they agreed no flirting.

Anne can’t help but be astounded by how much more at ease she feels now. Shibden Hall is no longer a terrifying future prospect to broach, and the shop no longer a problem for her to tackle alone. She finds herself looking around town and imagining herself shopping for groceries with her sister, taking her nephew to school, strolling around with Ann.

Maybe Halifax won’t be so bad after all.

Her next breath is one that reaches the bottom of her lungs for the first time since getting here, she feels. And before she can help it, tears start to dot the edges of her eyelids, making her itch all over. Another deep breath. And another.

She focuses on colors. Red roof tiles. Green bushes along the roads. A set of blue shutters on a bakery window. The fuzzy grey of the clouds overhead.

Maybe she’s not alright, and that’s okay.

She has found her smile again when she walks into _Skin Deep _and has to walk to the back to find people present. There is a girl half-naked on the chair, while Ann bends over her shoulder drawing what looks like a messy jumble of stark black lines from afar. The buzz and rattle of the tattoo needle drowns out all further thoughts, while she marvels at the art that is being engraved in skin.

When the lines connect, like an optical illusion, she can suddenly see it’s an abstract representation of the Scorpio star sign.

Ann snaps out of the zone she was in when she looks up from her work to see Anne standing there, concentration bursting apart to make place for another stellar smile. “I didn’t notice you coming in.”

“Didn’t want to interrupt you.”

Ann wipes down the tattoo, soaking up excess ink. Cleaned, the constellation becomes even more visible, drawn in thin black lines with a steady hand. It’s very no-non-sense. Anne really likes it.

“I’ll be right with you, okay?”

It takes a few more minutes before the girl’s out the store and Ann’s all hers, grinning while she gets to cleaning her appliances and putting her work station to rights again. Then she lights a scented candle to overwhelm the smell of disinfectant now clinging to the air.

“That constellation was really neat.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I have one too, want to see?”

Anne hums, swallowing the _god yes _of it. So Ann rolls up her shirt and exposes her ribs, where a veritable sky of stars is etched into her skin, with fine lines connecting some of them in patterns. Not one, not two, but three different ones. She doesn’t recognize them, but they have been rendered beautifully, in a style similar to Ann’s but not the same.

Her fingers attach to Ann’s skin before she can help herself, tracing connections across ridges of hard bone. She is so engrossed she almost misses the way Ann sharply inhales and then remains breathless.

They are suddenly very, very close.

“Anne,” Ann breathes, looking up at her through her eyelashes, breath stuttering beneath Anne’s fingertips.

“Yeah?”

“Can you go lock the door, please?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and i oop-  
goodnight

Her fingers tremble around the key for the entire two seconds it takes Anne Lister to lock the goddamn door. She takes a beat to catch herself, but when she turns around she sees Ann smoothing her sweater down again and darting away from her.

The moment they had shatters, glinting fragments of it magnifying the distance that springs up between them.

“I don’t usually leave out the back entrance, but I don’t usually shirk off work this often, either.” She grins over her shoulder at Anne before beckoning her along.

So maybe there hadn’t been a moment _at all_, just her coloring in the meaning she wanted it to have. Nevertheless, she follows. There’s nowhere she’d rather be.

They fall into step as easily as they have been for the past few weeks. While her unrequited desire simmers at a lower degree now, Anne still sneaks glances at her companion and marvels at how, even without anything happening between them, this is the person she wants to spend her evening with.

“Can you hold this for a second?” Before Anne can agree, a phone and a set of keys is dumped into her hands. Then a lighter, and a pair of sunglasses as well. “Oh, wait,” she clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shakes her head. “I need these, silly me.” Her fingers graze against Anne’s palm as she takes the keys back.

_What a beautiful flurry of energy_, she thinks as she watches Ann lock up the store for the day.

Leaning in, she asks, “What’s happening right now, by the way? Where are you kidnapping me to?”

Ann’s shoulders jump slightly at their proximity, but other than that, she doesn’t seem fazed as she swivels to face Anne. “We’re going to paint, of course. That _is _why you were coming over, wasn’t it?”

Right, she did. “To _choose _a color, yeah.”

“No time like the present.” Ann puts a hand up to Anne’s face and pats her cheek. “Today ended up being super slow anyway, so you’re really doing me a favor.”

Anne huffs a smile. “Sure thing, then.”

She angles her head and nips at the hand still patronizingly clasping her jaw. Ann pulls it back grinning. “Okay, you feral thing, gimme that.”

Their chatter halts while Ann thumbs through the swatches. Anne links their arms together to guide her across the pavement and to her car—then, because Ann seems fully _absorbed _in the colors by now, opens the door and just about gets her strapped in.

“What does your nephew like?” she hums from behind the fan.

Anne ponders that as she peels out of her parking space and sets course back to the hardware store. “No idea, actually. All I know is he likes space.”

“Oh, I can work with that.”

After the constellation she’s seen, Anne doesn’t doubt that—and just like that, skin and heat and cloudy blue eyes are back at the forefront of her mind.

The drive seems endless with the jittery energy bouncing off of Anne, but they do arrive eventually, the parking lot as empty as it was earlier in the day. For once, she doesn’t mind how excruciatingly small and desolate Halifax is if it means they can loitern without being disturbed.

“You carry this.” Ann is bossy when she takes point on something.

Anne doesn’t entirely dislike it, if only to take back control later and feel smug about it. For now, she carries the basket that is handed to her, and follows Ann down every row. Ann fans herself with the color swatches as she taps her fingers along the row of paint buckets until she finds a deep purplish blue that resembles the cosmos.

After hoisting three buckets of that color into their basket, she dances away, unburdened, beautiful.

Ann remains in the good mood, the vibrant energy. There is something different about her today—if Anne allowed herself to dwell on it, something a little _off_, but she doesn’t. She is too busy thinking about how excited she is to get back to Shibden Hall.

_Oh Ann, you miracle._

The room she has chosen for Tyler is on the first floor, facing the backyard. Tall windows let in a lot of natural light, but they also open onto a small balcony. Maybe she can get him a telescope for his next birthday.

Shibden Hall has become a place of dreams, of plans, of ideas.

She opens the windows an inch to let in the air.

“Let’s get to it, Lister.” The slap on her ass startles her entirely, has her clutching the handles as she swallows the yelp.

Anne looks at Ann, grin appearing in full force.

“What’s with the attitude, little Walker?”

The look Ann gives her is very unlike _little Walker_. She cocks her head and grins back. “You should’ve moved in here already, you know. Didn’t think you’d be so _slow_.”

Anne chooses to ignore the teasing, because it’s doing things to her and it won’t be productive if she pushes Ann up against the wall right now.

They tie their hair together, change into the spare clothes Anne left here for when she wanted to come work on the house for a bit, and they get to work. Pulling protective plastic across the wooden floorboards. Taping every edge, the window-sills, the window frames.

The paint is a luxurious cosmic, spilling around the wooden stick she uses to stir it through before pouring it out, and it’s going to look stellar on these walls.

Ann quiets down as soon as they start painting, sure stroke after sure stroke. The movements of painting, the focus of it also quiet down the thoughts rampaging in Anne’s mind.

They work in silence for most of the four walls, companionable and productive.

Anne is crouched in the corner, getting a few spots right above the baseboard that she missed, when she feels something wet and sticky drip down her bare neck.

“Oops,” Ann chuckles, pulling her brush away. “My bad.”

Slow to rise, Anne keeps her gaze steady on Ann. “Oops my ass,” she responds, leveraging her brush like a weapon. “Why don’t I believe that was an accident?”

“Hm, no idea.” Brandishing her own paint threat does little to hold Ann back, who just steps forward and takes the hit to her side to get within her personal space. She tilts her own brush up and ceremoniously bops it against Anne’s jaw. “You were being too serious.”

They fly through the room as Ann tries to get away and Anne gives chase, and before long, there’s paint on their arms, shoulders, backs. Ann’s face is covered in one wide diagonal slash that renders her a little Avatar-like, doe-eyes and all.

“I have no idea what’s gotten into you today,” she remarks as they finally relent, breathing heavy with exertion and held-back laughter. “But I haven’t felt young like this in a while.”

Ann sidles up to her and winks. “You _are _young. You just forget it.”

They clean up, stow things away to resume this another day, and stay close the entire time, never veering far.

“My house is closer than your hotel if you want to take a shower.” Ann offers it so innocently, Anne can’t help but accept, so that’s where they’re off to next.

The sun is setting by now, the sky a color not dissimilar to the paint they have all over themselves, broken up by lamp posts and bars spilling townsfolk onto the streets. Anne keeps the radio volume low. The events that just transpired still feel a little surreal to her—the whirlwind of manic energy that is Ann Walker taking her pleasantly by surprise once more.

“I’ll get some food sorted while you’re in there.” Ann shows her the bathroom and then leaves her alone.

Clean and tidy, this bathroom is likely the least Ann Walker space there is to the apartment. Anne still snoops around a bit just to make sure, but there isn’t anything interesting to find between jars of body cream and tubes of toothpaste.

She endeavors to shower quickly, but scrubbing off the paint takes a while. Some flecks, despite her best efforts, entirely refuse to leave, so her jaw is marked by dark blue and a few inches of the inside of her arm is as well.

Ann has made do with the kitchen sink in the meanwhile, but she hasn’t managed to get rid of it all either. “There you are. I made us drinks.” Ann’s is almost finished though, so she gets herself a refill before they settle in their usual places on that ever so comfortable couch.

Rather than choosing a movie, they fall into an equally comfortable conversation.

The evening carries on pleasantly, winding through all sorts of conversation topics. Anne fidgets with her glass a lot, finger dragging back and forth across it, liquid swirling. At one point Ann gets up to close the blinds and set the bottles with them on the coffee table. At another point, they collide shoulder-to-shoulder after much shuffling and remain that way, warm and close to cuddling.

“It sucks that you’re pretty much the only close friend I have right now.”

Anne mulls the words over, but in her sleepy, alcohol-addled mind they take a while to be processed. Asking why it sucks feels like dangerous terrain, so, slurring slightly, she asks, “What about Harriet?”

Ann shifts so that she’s sitting on her knees on the couch, taller than Anne now by a few inches. “We’re colleagues. It’s different.” She doesn’t look entirely steady, swaying somewhat, but she doesn’t seem to care. Despite the topic, her smile is wide and beaming. She is still erratic, full of energy. Bouncy. “Don’t you wanna know why?”

“I want to know all the why’s,” Anne answers honestly. She flings her arm over the back of the couch and turns sideways, leans her head sideways so that her vision of Ann is at a 45 degree angle—she’s still dazzling that way.

There is no answer. Not spoken. Ann is tilting forward—too forward, inching closer. Hand settling on Anne’s thigh to help balance herself as she leans down, leans in. Noses touch. Their breaths, heavy with citrus and drink, cloud together.

Anne can see every sunburst freckle, the faint laughing wrinkles by the corners of her mouth.

All of it feels wrong. It’s because she’s sleepy. She’s drunk. It’s been a heady sort of day they’ve had, the fumes of the paint, the—

She is so close that she sees the exact fraction of a second when Ann’s peaceful expression breaks for something angry.

“God damn you, Lister,” Ann spits out, pushing rather hard against her shoulders. They jostle, Ann loses her balance, Anne catches her.

There really is something off with Ann, but it’s heartbreaking to see.

She keeps uttering _god damn you_’s beneath her breath as she slumps against Anne’s chest and leans her head against her sternum. “Let me make my mistakes.”

_We’re too drunk for this_, she thinks. The whole world is off-kilter, tilting, weaving. “What do you mean?”

Ann wiggles a bit, moving so that she can bury her head in Anne’s neck instead, nosing at the base of her throat. Anne tries to be calm, but every nerve-ending inside her has been ignited. “Why’s it only you can kiss me first? Hm? I’m a grown-up now, damn you.”

It would be cute, the petulant pout of her bottom lip, if she didn’t look and sound so genuinely _angry_.

“Ann, can you talk to me? Please?”

There are angry tears spilling down Ann’s cheeks when she pulls herself away, but—and Anne’s not about to argue—stays straddling Anne’s lap. Her palms wipe angrily over her cheeks, adding to the deep crimson that was already filling up her face.

“I wasn’t going to let you get to me again. Not a third time.”

Anne’s fidgeting has stopped, now that she is focusing on Ann as intently as she ever has on anything.

“After prom, I thought that was it. Do you have any idea how badly you hurt me?” She prods a finger between Anne’s ribs, but the twang of pain seems a small price to pay. “But you come back and I’m falling all over myself to be your friend, to give you another chance. _Friends_. Friends don’t want each other this bad.”

She huffs, chest billowing with it. “Or that’s what I fucking thought, but you won’t—”

“I do want you.” She shouldn’t say it. She knows she shouldn’t, but how is she to resist this angrily ranting woman in her lap? Every fiber of her being is burning for her. There is only so much clarity she is capable of now.

“_Do_ you?” More tears sparkle, and more anger behind the blue of her eyes. “Do you even know what you want, Anne?”

In response, she kisses Ann. It’s not sweet or shy like the kisses she remembers, or hurried, or chaste. Ann is all exploding force, teeth, clawing hands. Her fingers that draw such delicate lines now knot inside Anne’s hair, tug, and she releases a noise so primitive they both know there’s no going back after this.

Their kisses are only interrupted by their laden breaths pushing into the night, their mouths trailing, marks being left. Ann is vicious in the way she attacks Anne again and again, with her mouth, her body.

They’ll need to have a proper conversation about all of it.

Anne can’t think about it with her hands searching out the constellation tattoo again, skimming her breasts, dipping into her shorts, cupping her ass.

Ann clings onto her when suddenly the world is twisting and Anne is lifting her, crushing her beneath her body back into the couch.

They’re gracelessly pushing and shoving at each other now, snagging in clothing, tearing. Ann rakes her nails down Anne’s back as soon as it is bared, so Anne sinks her teeth into Ann’s shoulder.

Their desire unleashed is no longer a shy fluttering thing on Ann’s part, or slick and smooth on Anne’s.

Ann is trembling against her, head tilted back, cheeks flushed, shamelessly rutting against her thigh. The sounds spilling from her open mouth _are _soft, purring velvet.

Anne wants to take her time, tease, toy, but she can’t. She’s grinding right back, moaning against Ann’s cheek, leaving fingerprints on her hip as she holds on tight.

They find each other in more heated kisses, moaning together, furrowed brows, sweat building, heat rising. Ann keens against her, quick to come, whole body tensing. Anne needs a little more time, curling herself around Ann, hands finding purchase on her ass to give herself the final edge to stumble over.

Panting, they disentangle. Anne watches as Ann gets up and starts toeing at the discarded clothes, moving them out of the way. Then Ann surprises her by holding out a hand.

“That was barely enough to make up for all you’ve done. Come.”

And for once, just once, Anne listens, and lets herself be dragged to the bedroom.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey-ho! not sure how soon i'll be able to get next chapter up because i'll be livestreaming for most of my free time tomorrow (6-10PM UK time at twitch.tv/outpostgamecenters if you want to see me play games with my two coolest friends) and also have plans for thursday evening, but i *can* tell you i'm very much back into this story and will be taking every chance i get to continue writing it.
> 
> thank you for your patience, your love, and your support. hope you're all doing good, staying safe, and being healthy out there! <3

Behind the edge of her wakening awareness, there is warmth and softness and a body glued to hers, Ann tucked within her arms and against her front. Anne has an arm sturdily locked over Ann’s waist—her fingers resting against her stomach, now slowly unfurling to touch.

The events of the night before filter back into her mind one flash of Ann’s body at a time—shoulder, thigh, breast, lip, neck. Goose bumps scatter across the entirety of her as she recalls the sounds whimpered into her ear, the fire of Ann’s anger only being stoked so that they’d had no option but to _fuck_, raw and hard and so fucking satisfying.

Anne feels softer now, traces her digits in more tender patterns up Ann’s ribs.

“Mhm, that tickles.” Ann’s voice is hoarse, a sleepy rasp out of her throat. “Five more minutes.”

Anne nestles into Ann’s back, nosing into her chestnut hair and the downy fuzz at the nape of her neck. Every breath pushes them closer together.

After what could have been five minutes or five hours of them drowsily lying together, Ann burrows and moves around until they’re facing each other in the dark. The spark of their lips meeting is enough for Anne to spring at attention—then she’s not thinking at all, just feeling the gentle press of Ann’s mouth, parting the seam of her lips, their tongues so much more tentative now than they were yesterday.

The silence of the bedroom is only interrupted by their heavy breathing and the sheets rustling as they start to writhe together, hands reaching, arms shifting.

She starts to say something, but Ann shuts her up convincingly by tugging her bottom lip between her teeth and raking her nails down her hips, so that Anne can’t utter any sound but a guttural moan.

“No talking,” Ann whispers, blue eyes imploring her with startling severity. “I don’t want your words right now... but I do want to _hear _you.”

The first swipe against her clit is electric. After that, it’s sound and fleeting thoughts, curse words that burst out of her like a chant, her holding Ann’s name on her tongue reverently.

She presses her forehead to Ann when she’s so close to the edge that particles of light start to infuse her vision, and kisses her to muffle the cry that rips from her.

Left gasping for air, the realization dawns on her within seconds that they’re doing this sober now, in the obstructed light of day but clear-headed. After some blinking she manages to take in Ann’s face, the smug lines of her smile, the curious glint to her baby blues.

“Good morning,” Ann whispers sweetly.

Anne rolls on top of her, chuckling, “Good morning indeed,” before she starts to kiss her way down a chest marked heavily as if by a toothy monster, lavishes attention to nipples that bud hard against her lips, delves between trembling thighs so that Ann becomes unable to speak any more words as well.

What a way to wake up. They steal an hour of time away like that, the minutes of shared solitude sheltered between their limbs. Eventually they have to shake off the sheets though, face the music. Daybreak blasts sunshine across Halifax so bright it would be a shame to stay inside all day, even if it’s oh so appealing.

Anne peels out of bed reluctantly, following Ann into the living room. While she fishes her clothes from the floor, her lover starts fussing with a kettle and mugs, the clinking and shuffling around in the kitchen a soothing sound after how hard they went at each other.

There’s a soreness to parts of her body that she has never had before. Something pulls painfully when she stretches her arms over her head. She’s going to be feeling this for a couple of days—it’ll be fun to be reminded so often.

While getting dressed, Anne watches Ann unashamedly, the way she moves a little awkwardly to avoid her own soreness, the bouncing of her shoulder-length hair as she darts from one side of her small kitchen to the other, the sheer concentration she is putting on the simple task.

Anne sits down close to her and gratefully accepts the cup of tea, taking a few sips of scalding tea before saying, “I want to talk about those things you said last night. Whenever you’re up for it.”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.” The smile that appears on Ann’s ever-so-lovely, though tired-looking, face is small but genuine, lighting up the room despite the closed curtains. “Maybe tonight?”

“Tonight’s perfect.” Every evening was perfect, since Anne rarely made plans these days anymore, all for the sake of having the time free for Ann to fill her days. “I think I’m going to continue working on Shibden, so we can meet out there?”

“Sure, yeah. Sounds like a plan.”

They spend the rest of their tea in silence, sipping and thinking and rousing fully for the day to come. Anne alternates between memories of Ann and preparations for Shibden Hall, before slowly the latter start to take up most of her computing power.

But they dawdle at goodbye. Anne hovers by the front door, leaning, smiling. Their idle chatter is just there to prolong their time together.

So she pulls Ann in by the collar of her dress and kisses her, though she keeps it from deepening lest they get too caught-up in each other and _have _to take it back to the bedroom.

Ann’s kisses still taste like a slice of paradise.

“Okay, go.” Ann pushes against her shoulder, jostling loose the memory of her angry outburst in a similar fashion last night, causing Anne to smirk—“_Go_. Take that face away from me.”

There is a spring to her step as she walks away from Ann Walker’s apartment. It feels good to be back in Halifax.

* * *

Walking into her uncle’s study is a lot easier than the master bedroom will be, though she was just as devastated when he passed. Time has worn the worst of the ache off it by now.

They have come through here already—the hardwood floor is polished to a shine and smells of citrus, the dust has been swept off every surface. She spends fifteen minutes cleaning the windows so that they’re a brilliant translucent, the view through them of the copse of trees in the backyard.

She goes to retrieve her bag from her car and installs herself behind the wide, sprawling desk. Even her office back at the law firm has nothing on this.

The chair creaks beneath her weight, but holds her comfortably. It doesn’t matter that all she does is browse for furniture on her laptop and scroll through the inbox of the flower shop, she feels pretty damn important sitting here.

Maybe she could turn this into her home office. Could she handle a commute to London occasionally to be able to keep practicing law?

All things to ponder, but only when she’s got Marian settled here and running the store.

Thoughts brought to her sister now, she digs for her phone and rings her up. They’ve mostly been texting, and Anne has been keeping her updated on her progress through pictures.

They catch up for a bit, while Anne tips her chair back to position herself within the rays of sunshine falling into the room, props her feet up on the desk and closes her eyes to better take in the familiar lull of Marian’s voice.

“Are you still there?”

“Oh yes, I’m listening,” Anne says, smiling against her phone. “Don’t leave me hanging there, Marian.”

Marian huffs in an attempt not to let her chuckle be heard. “I’m sure you are so riveted by the day-to-day details of childcare.”

“Actually,” she replies, mouth hitching into an even wider smile, “I _am_. I can’t wait to have you and Tyler here so I can be a part of it.”

Autumn Half-Term can’t come soon enough. It’s only a few weeks out now, and the time crunch will supply itself soon enough, but for now it still feels like too many days left to go.

The call takes longer than she expects it to, and then she gets so swept up in reading mails from her colleagues back in London that she does not realize how fast time is passing until a knock at the door frame startles her from the paragraph she had been typing—trying to remain concise, while reveling in getting to flex her lawyer muscles again after so long, even if it was just being asked for advice on something.

“You were very focused,” Ann says, shaking her head slightly. “I think I shouted your name like seven times.”

Oh, to have missed her name carried by that voice. For shame.

“I was just doing some work stuff, but I’m all ears now.” She demonstratively closes her laptop and pushes away from the desk, then rises smoothly out of the chair and stalks over to Ann. “How about a walk outside?”

“Good idea.”

For however long the good weather lasts, Anne wants to enjoy it, and she doesn’t seem alone in that. October is nearing, and with it the promise of dreariness and rain. But not now—now the sky’s devoid of clouds, suffused with colors and the smell of grass and heated roads cooling down in the shade.

Shibden Hall’s backyard isn’t fully a mess of overgrown plant-life yet, but it’s going to become one soon. They have to choose their footing carefully and kick at roots occasionally. It’s still a nice enough walk.

“All day I’ve been thinking about what I want to say and how I want to say it. It would’ve been so much easier if you’d pushed a little harder yesterday—when I was angry it seemed so easy to hurl all these things at you.”

Anne bumps her shoulder into Ann’s. “I can piss you off if that’s what you need.”

Ann chuckles. “Or don’t do that.”

The hills proudly carry the colorful bunch of flowers that will start to wilt and shed soon, deep purples and reds and oranges as far as the eye can see, and the trickle of the pond layered through the birdsong and gentle breeze.

You can’t find places like this in London. She should be more mindful of that.

“Okay.” Ann takes a breath so deep it must fill her up to the toes. “I think what we did last night was a mistake. I don’t... regret it, per se, but it was a mistake.”

Well, _that _was not what she’d expected to hear. Instantly her mood soured, tasting bile at the back of her throat.

“But I’m a grown-up, and at least it was my choice this time.” Ann comes to a halt by a patch of white lilies and turns to Anne, close but not close enough, face suddenly guarded and become like a foreign script. “Do you know how long it took me to get over you, Anne Lister?”

Anne never really thought about that. She never really thought about any of it back then. It had just been her pleasures, her whims, her choices. “I don’t know. How long?”

“_Four _years.” She scrubs a hand over her face, pulls her hair away from her forehead and combs it behind her ears. “And that’s on me, that it took that long. I should have just accepted that we both knew you weren’t in it for forever, and we weren’t meant for each other, and—you know. But that left me a little broken.”

Anne’s hands are pulled into a warm grasp.

“I thought I could ignore the pain you caused me, but I don’t think I can. I see you and I go crazy again like I’m that fifteen-year-old again, and then I’m spiraling back to that place of hurt.”

A deep sigh, pulling something loose and rattling inside Anne.

“I feel like I’ve been in love with you my entire life and it just _hurts_.” Her voice breaks on the last word, bottom lip trembling something wicked, tears shimmering at her eyelashes. “Because you’ve never loved me back, have you?”

And Anne can’t find it within herself to lie. Solemnly, she shakes her head. “No, I haven’t.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Her chest constricts around the feelings that spout so powerfully from her now, because it’s not love, but it could be—god, she didn’t even realize how strongly she’d come to feel about Ann until right this instant where she can feel _them _start to slip away from her grasp.

This new silence is oppressive, bearing down on her.

Ann breaks it to say, “So I’m going to go away for a while.”

And that’s the sound of two hearts breaking.


	10. Chapter 10

It has been a few days and Anne Lister is _fine_, she’s _doing great_, she is handling it like a champ. All Ann Walker had been was a diversion, and they were better as friends anyway, and—her mind runs in the same loops, repetitions of the same thoughts, and it’s practically background noise by now.

There’s hurt somewhere, but she is burying it as deep down as she can.

She has finally started moving herself into Shibden Hall. It feels good, at least, to be able to see the girl at the front desk for the last time, to leave her shame and embarrassment behind on the squeaky tiles of the lobby. It was far beneath her to stay there that long to begin with.

Kneeling in her room, she unpacks her suitcases, extricating the top layer that she has been using and the things from London that haven’t seen the light of day since she packed them months ago. She can finally stall out her books again—the most important ten, anyway, the rest is still back at her old apartment. Her running shoes and workout clothes, which she puts to the side instead of in the dresser so that they might see use.

Her journals.

She hasn’t written a word since her aunt passed away. It leaves off so abruptly on a fine summer day, drinks with co-workers, half-finished thoughts on the case she had been working on that she was meant to return to and complete, Mariana. She drags her thumb over the grooves her pen had made in the paper, feeling the curves and dots and letting the meaning of words wash away for a moment.

With her vest unbuttoned over a crinkled shirt, her hair ruffled and sliding by her face, the sun hitting her through the window, she feels far-removed from the person she used to be.

She sits her back against the wall and puts the journal in her lap. There are so many pages that should have been filled, but she had been unable to put to words the void that had torn open in her chest. She doesn’t think she ever can—but then she touches ink to the page and surfaces some time later, hand cramped-up, her script going from a scrawl to a fine script to a scrawl again over several pages.

There are splotches on some.

She has written a requiem.

_To have seen your face one last time, but without your kindness, your wisdom, your—oh Aunt Anne, I have failed you._

“You would know what to say to me right now,” she mutters, letting her head tilt back against the wall. With her eyes closed, she can imagine her aunt sitting across from her, swathed in the smell of Shibden Hall. “You would know how I could make it all better.”

Her head falls sideways a little, how it would whenever her aunt sat down next to her and let her cry on her shoulder. No more tears come, though she feels them choke her, they’re filling her up that much.

She slips the book off her lap and goes rummaging through previous volumes. One in particular. Purple cover, lined paper, handwriting so small it’s almost illegible.

It says _August 13, 2003 _at the top of the first page she opens, so she flips through until she gets to midway 2004—that’s when it all started, she remembers it clear as day, like she remembers everything.

_June 7, 2004_

_At the Walkers’ today. I’ve now confirmed that little Walker does have a crush on me—it’s cute, in a sort of elementary school way. I bet she would have no idea how to handle me reciprocating, if a shitty-ass compliment gets her this red. I wanna be her first though, mark her, ruin her for everyone else. I bet she makes such sweet sounds._

_June 18, 2004_

_Invited Ann to go to a party with us and she almost dropped dead on the spot. Showed up in a sexier dress than I thought she would. When I kissed her, she tensed up so hard I thought she’d frozen. Maybe more alcohol next time._

_June 20, 2004_

_At the Walkers’ again, and Ann flusters even more every time she sees me. I stole into her room and made out with her on her bed, tried to go for more but she stopped me. I’ll just keep trying._

Her eyes are flitting through the pages, gathering up fragments in long paragraphs, stomach roiling. Maybe she has been remembering things rosy-colored, because in her mind she was never quite this... predatory. Taking advantage of a young girl.

She didn’t love Ann back, it’s true. But she also didn’t have any respect for her.

_June 27, 2004_

_Another party. Getting really tired of this small town and its small people. London is going to be so much better for me. I’ll miss John and Samuel and the lot, but not the rest of them. Not Ann, though she’s fun. We’ve been making out so much she’s finally not clinging onto me like a buoy anymore. Her mind must be blown that I’m even wanting to kiss her. But I’m not entirely selfless—the way she looks at me makes me feel fucking good. More girls should look at me like I’m a God._

_August 2, 2004_

_Put my hands under Ann’s shirt today and she started trembling fiercely. This girl..._

A whole summer of teasing, sneaking kisses while her brother wasn’t watching, house parties where they all got way too drunk and did dumb shit. Anne had felt invincible back then, a golden god of a youngster, in the prime of her life. And then she’d just left.

She shakes her head as she chucks the volume away and reaches for the next, is sick knowing what’s coming but forcing herself to face the reality of it. A plan is forming in the back of her mind, and she needs this for it.

_February 24, 2006_

_In Halifax for a bit, to see the family and the old stomping grounds. I forgot it’s senior prom this week—Marian wouldn’t shut up about it—funnily enough, it seems like I’ll be going. Went ‘round to the Walkers, found Ann instead of her brother. Still cute, but she’s also become a lot prettier. Getting older looks good on her. Not a skinny little thing anymore either. But she still preens under my attention and that’s all that matters. Her prom date has bailed on her, so of course, selflessly, I have offered to be her new one. And everyone knows what happens after prom._

_February 27, 2006_

_How satisfying to have been Ann Walker’s first after all this time. That’s a good girl, waiting for me like that. Maybe I’ll go see her before I leave again._

Anne laughs as she tamps down the urge to fight her younger self for being so careless and disgusting with Ann, an edge of disgust lining her every thought now. She definitely had remembered that more favorably than the reality had been...

For the second time that day, she puts her pen to paper and writes the things she has no capacity to say, though now on loose sheets of paper, addressed not to herself but to Ann. To apologize, to explain herself, to write of all the feelings she has now, revealing them to Ann as much as to herself.

She’ll write her way out of this mess.

The sun’s going down by the time she’s up and out, three full pages folded into an envelope. Halifax is quiet only in the seconds between chirps and rustling leaves, far-off barks and close-by streaming of running water. She can hear her wicked heartbeat laced between.

Anne is going fast even by her standards, marching resolutely, but still unable to out-walk her thoughts.

Her doubts, creeping in.

There’s Ann’s front door. Her curtains are closed.

Is she sleeping?

Is she home at all?

Fuck, she doesn’t know when Ann was leaving for New York.

She comes to a halt in the middle of the street, clutching the letter in her hand. Even if she’s home, it’s dawning on her she’s _still _not respecting her wishes.

All she has asked for is space. Time.

Distance.

For once in her life, Anne Lister does the selfless thing. She crumples up the letter inside the pocket of her coat and turns around, away, taking all the unspoken things with her.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! <3

The boarding house is quiet. It doesn’t surprise her at four am. Her sleep schedule has been yielding to her jet lag since she landed, meaning she has been going to sleep in the middle of the afternoon for a couple of days now. The quiet doesn’t surprise her, but she does not like it.

Ann Walker is sitting by the small desk in her room, knees pulled up onto her chair with her, one hugged to her chest. With her tongue pressed to her teeth, she drags her pen across the smooth surface of her tablet. Dots become curved lines become flower petals. They frame the fox that is the center piece, left side a gentle animal, right side a feral copy.

“Are you dying your hair pink?”

Ann looks up from her work to see one of the other guests peeking into her room. What first catches her is the peacock hair, shades of green, blue, and purple all tumbling together. There’s a set of hazel eyes peering between neon locks and a mouth quirked in an amused smile.

She _did_ buy boxes of pink hair dye, but that had been as much spur of the moment as deciding that her running away from Anne Lister meant she would run away to another continent a couple of weeks early.

“I think so.”

“Cool. If you need some help, I’m only two doors down from you.”

The stranger is about to turn away when, chair scraping across the floor, Ann gets up. Fuck it, she wants to go back to the person she had become before Anne swept back into her life like a wrecking ball. That Ann dared to do anything. “Do you have time right now?”

They get set up in the upstairs bathroom. The bulbs mounted above the mirror shine harsh light directly into her face, so she closes her eyes and decides she’s not opening them again until it’s all done. Sometimes bravery needs a little help. “I’m Ann, by the way.”

“Alice.”

Alice massages the dye into her hair with practiced strokes and a satisfying rub, all the while not speaking until she says, “You have really nice tats.”

“Thanks.” She moves her arms a bit, turning the insides upwards, showcasing. “Do you have any?”

“Yeah,” comes the hum from behind her. “Only one so far, but I’m hoping to get more.”

“I’m a tattoo artist, actually. I’m here for some guest work and a convention soon.”

“Maybe I’ll get my next one from you then.”

When Ann hops out of the shower half an hour later, her hair’s vibrantly magenta.

She spends a few minutes finding good lighting and a better angle to make some selfies, then uploads one and makes sure to use the location tag—she spends the rest of time until daybreak trying not to wonder if Anne will see it.

What would she be doing right now? Is she thinking about Ann? Or is she busy with business? Busy with... something else.

With Ann no longer in Halifax, has she moved on to someone else?

Over the next few days, Ann learns that Alice is an aspiring writer who came to New York without much precalculating but with a great dose of motivation. Publishing houses and agents haven’t been responding in the way she’d expected, hoped, but she doesn’t let that phase her.

When she isn’t out trying to convince people to take a chance on her novel, she is known to bug Ann—Ann does not mind this whatsoever. She didn’t have any plans either except to get away.

New York is mostly _tall _from what she sees; buildings shooting up from the ground to climb, rise, reach for the sky. The weather’s much nicer than the dreariness of England she left behind, so that she spends as much time outside as she can. The streets are very narrow and organized, not a winding mess of roads and forks and branches and dead-ends like she is used to. The crunch of people is incredible.

There is art in every inch of this city. She cannot take in nearly enough of it.

Together with her colorful new friend, she visits the Empire State Building and rides the elevator all the way to the top, lurching with equal parts excitement and fear. Clinging to the rails, she looks over the vast mass that is the capital of the world and swallows. They stroll around for a pleasant evening through Williamsburg, where Alice tells her all about the Beat poets history that transpired there.

They climb into bed together two bottles of wine and two weeks of friendship down, all skinny limbs embracing, sticky lips pressing to unfamiliar skin, a little awkward and fumbling but—good.

Good enough.

She peels out of bed when she thinks Alice has finally fallen asleep and steals downstairs. There’s a bag of loose leaf tea in the cupboard that she bought on her second day because their host didn’t have any to offer, and she spends a shaky few minutes preparing a cup for herself.

No matter what she does, no matter where she goes, she closes her eyes and there she is—Anne Lister. Smiling at her. Leering at her. Face softening much more than she probably realized herself. Ann can’t go long without thinking about her.

Anne bending over to reach the remote control, shirt riding up her back a little. Anne laughing despite herself, dots of light climbing into her eyes. Anne smiling in a way that she never did when they were younger, for some reason keeping the arrogance out of it.

Anne still being the most beautiful person Ann has ever seen, yet so different from the person she knew back when—or so it had seemed.

She can’t know if Anne doesn’t let her in.

The kettle whistles and she pours the scalding water over the ball strainer, watches it steep for a while. Before it can become too bitter, she pulls the strainer out and takes her first sip.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She’d been adamant, not only with Anne but also with herself, that they would only be friends. Nothing more. Nothing else. Obviously, much like the first time, she had been defenseless against that charm.

It was exquisite. Her skin prickles every time she thinks of the force with which Anne kissed her.

Fucked her.

She leans against the counter, blowing an angry breath out through her nose. Not for the first time today, she has her phone in her hand and opened to Facebook before she can think this course of action through. Anne Lister is notoriously inactive on the website, always has been, so she doesn’t know why she suddenly expects her to start posting updates.

Not knowing how Anne is doing, _what _she is doing, is going to consume her. _Can the distance start working a little faster?_

Her heart leaps when she sees the other woman active on Messenger—that isn’t so weird, it’s only a little before midnight in Halifax. In their last messages to each other they hadn’t transgressed beyond friendship yet—

_[I want to show you my favorite movie of all time. We’ll do it at Shibden, so I can adequately prepare everything for this masterpiece.]_

_[you know you don’t have to go all out for me, right?]_

_[Sure, but I want to. Trust me?]_

_[of course.]_

What would Anne’s favorite movie be? And what did she mean by _prepare_? Maybe they _had _already transgressed then. At least Ann had—she remembers trying not to be giddy when she got these.

If only Anne could have just been _transparent_.

She slams the cup down a little too hard—it rattles on its saucer. With another frustrated sigh, she lets herself slip to the kitchen floor. Her bare legs stretch across the cold tile.

She firmly believes she did the right thing, but it _sucks_. All of it.

If only she could finally, once and for all move on from Anne Lister, that would be great.

* * *

The convention offers her first proper distraction. As soon as her countdown dwindles to the single digits, she shifts into a mind space that repels thoughts about anything else. She spends most of her days taking a subway down to Central Park. Draped onto a sunny bit of grass, she sketches out as many designs as she can come up with, to have a bigger library of flash sales for the event.

With a binder full of her art works and her badge dangling from a lanyard around her neck, she shows up early at the convention center on the surprisingly chilly Friday afternoon. It shows that she’s never done this sort of thing before, because more than once someone asks her if she knows where she’s going, but eventually she gets to her allotted space and gets to work setting up.

Because she’s so early, she gets to spend half an hour looking through the available flash tattoos of her neighboring booths. One stick-and-poke artist in particular makes it very difficult for her to tear herself away and go back to her stool.

People don’t drip in slowly—it’s a flood of them all at once, a mass of folx that are all excited about body modifications. She hasn’t been around so many of them since she apprenticed in a shop in Birmingham.

It only takes half an hour before a tall, imposing man stops flipping through her work to ask her, “Do you have time right now for a leg piece?” Does she ever—she has no appointments on the books whatsoever. While she gets his chosen design onto transfer paper, more people come; some reserve their spots for later in the day, others watch.

As soon as the tattoo gun starts to buzz inside her grasp, the noise around her mutes to a buzz softer than that of her tool. He’s a good client, doesn’t fuss, handles the pain easily, talkative. If the whole weekend’s like this, she’s going to have to do conventions more often.

Very attractive women sit in her chair. Burly men. A very shy boy asks for the trans flag. She has an asshole start to bug her, but security has him out on his ass before it can start to affect her.

Friday passes by so fast that she can’t even think about how the time flies. Feeling proud of herself, she heads back to the boarding house that night scrolling through the photos in which she has been tagged. She is taking the stairs two at a time while sharing some of them on the story of _Skin Deep_.

Saturday continues the weekend in much the same way, broken up only by her own appointment. She has caved for an artist that does watercolors in a unique way so different from her own that she wants it on her body, to adore, to study. Every hit of the needle into her skin makes her relax more, so that by the end of it, she has melted into the leather. The phoenix on her arm rises proudly from the ashes, drawn up in beautiful shades of red, orange, and yellow.

“Your accent is really hot,” Noelle says, looking up at her from her half-kneeling position while wiping her arm down.

Ann flushes. “Thanks.”

“I’m passing through the UK in a month. I could do touch-ups and coloring then, if you’re available.”

She tilts her head, calculating this woman—objectively breathtaking, wonderful at her job—and thinks only briefly of who is waiting for her back home. “I would like that.”

A bunch of the booth holders go out for drinks that night. She isn’t the only one with body parts wrapped in plastic, preening as they show their new ink to anyone eager to see.

Despite keeping it to one drink, she hooks up with Noelle in the bathroom as if she’s wasted, murmuring filth in her lilting British voice directly into her ear. Her bum is sore from how she was pressed to the door, but she can’t complain too much.

Maybe her trip to New York isn’t the picturesque montage video she had expected it would be, but getting her brains fucked out by a honey-tongued lesbian with more tattoos than bare skin is exactly what she needs.

She hobbles a little jelly-legged onto the convention floor on Sunday, sad it’s already the last day. Seven people pass beneath her hands before Alice shows up, grinning wide and whipping her tank top off without preamble. The back piece is going to take up all the time she has left.

The snake curls upwards her spine, its forked tongue and sharp teeth tattooed at the base of her skull, a place she loves to work on but rarely gets to. It takes her several hours to draw every scale, the flowers and leaves around the curlicue of its body, vines stretching towards her shoulders. The finer details reach to her sides, to low down her back.

It’s massive. Ann has to take a break halfway through to rest her hand and drink, for she is parched and sweating with the effort.

“I hope this heals nicely, but chances are you’re going to need touch-ups.”

Alice smiles, takes Ann’s hands and flips them upside to kiss her palms. “I’ll visit you.”

And just like that, the weekend’s over. Ann uses the healing tattoo as an excuse not to spend her last night with Alice, but, floundering with her thoughts once more and not eager to be alone, does visit Noelle at her hotel. It’s all luxury, floor-to-ceiling mirrors looking out over upper Manhattan.

They have mini bottles of booze from the mini bar. Noelle orders them fruit up with room service despite it being well past midnight. Even furniture in a hotel like this will creak the way they go at it.

Ann sneaks out in the morning, but leaves behind her phone number.

She decides to walk back. It’s a long trek, guided by Google Maps, but she needs it. Life has been coming at her hard and fast these last few weeks. She came out here to get distance from Anne, but all she has been doing is thinking about her.

Even in the haze of three consecutive orgasms, Noelle’s dark hair splayed over her pale thigh looked like Anne’s in the dark, and that hand possessively clawing up her stomach had brought her right back to having Anne press her deeply into her couch.

It was like this twelve years ago too. After prom, all she did was revisit and revisit and revisit every second, turning them over, scrutinizing. The echoes in her skin are still Anne’s touches. There have been purrs, commands, pleas—but it’s Anne’s drawls and Anne’s words that keep her company every time her thoughts stray.

She doesn’t believe in soulmates. She doesn’t believe that Anne is the only love of her life because she was first _and _second.

Then why does it feel like she is?

Ann keeps walking.


	12. Chapter 12

There’s a knot of worry that grew from the moment the plane took off, but it has firmly taken root by now, woven itself around soft tissue, tendrilled into every inch of her skin. She tried to distract herself by sleeping, idly sketching, watching a movie that was part of the in-flight entertainment, but nothing kept the thoughts at bay.

Ann walks into Halifax with her jacket drawn tight around her—England’s really quite cold this time of year, and the contrast with New York is _huge_—and her hands fiddling with the zipper, up and down, up and down, to have some outlet for the stress that’s heaped inside her chest.

She doesn’t know if she wants to run into her or would be loath to even catch sight of her. Well, she got the space she wanted, didn’t she? The time away? The non-communication? The _nothing_? The nothing of it that is driving her crazy, hands fisting in fabric, teeth trying to tear into something with the nothing of it? She got it, she asked for it—so then why does she feel like she’s being punished?

Her stomach is squeezing, despite being empty still making her nauseous.

She realizes right before it happens that she really doesn’t want to run into Anne just yet. It’s too fresh. She only returned yesterday night.

Evidently, Anne Lister just so happens to be at the flower shop. Sitting out front among crates of flowers, elbows leaning down on her thighs, the sun catches her at an angle in a sort of washy

white light, draws a halo into her hair, and she looks like a _painting_. Her smile is a lazy thing, an afterthought of a thing, but mirth shines bright in her eyes like beacons.

Ann recognizes Marian Lister easily enough, and the boy standing by her, curled into the hand on his shoulder, must be Tyler then. He’s staring at his aunt like she’s the coolest person in the world, hanging onto her every word. Ann can relate.

Just as she is about to wonder if she can sneak by them unnoticed, dark eyes latch onto her. Anne’s whole demeanor changes—shoulders slump, smile fades, something settles in those eyes that she can’t quite decipher. Marian and Tyler whirl around to see what Anne’s looking at.

Marian’s pretty perceptive, because after a few glances between them she seems to have figured out what’s up, or at least thinking in the right direction. She was around back then, must have heard the rumors, or maybe—well, Ann doesn’t really know, and doesn’t really want to think about it, but Marian’s looking at her with a _lot _of naked curiosity and interest in her face.

Tyler shyly backs into his mother, but he smiles up at Ann, cheeks dimpled with his precociousness.

Caught in the spotlight, Ann tries to dredge up a smile from somewhere, half-convincing is more than enough for her, just—_anything_. God, this is awkward. And it’s really not something she can use right now to worry about Anne’s sadness on top of everything else.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” Anne’s voice is low, surprisingly quiet. Ann’s stomach flips. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks. I’m gonna—”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Ann tears herself away from the family clustered on the pavement, asking herself where her anger has gone, her indignant rage, the sadness that exploded into hateful projectiles before? She was so mad, rightfully so, and so sad, also rightfully so, just thinking back on how—and Anne—the memories used to be present _all _the time.

Now she carries the sight of a deflated Anne with her into her shop, aching against her will to go back and—what?

“Don’t think about it,” she sternly tells herself, flipping through her phone to redirect her train of thoughts. Harriet’s got some time off, what with the universe conspiring to make sure she is left alone with her thoughts, and she doesn’t have her first appointment until a few hours from now, touching up on one of the last tattoos she did before she bounced.

Cleaning it is then.

There is, at least, something about meticulously cleaning her workspace that helps her zone out a little. The scent of disinfectant takes her out of herself enough to remember some tattoos she has done or gotten instead of—the touch of Anne’s skin beneath her fingers, perfect canvas for ink. The hoarse, breathless aspect of her moans.

She huffs angrily as she sets everything aside to drop her head in her hands.

All she wants is some peace of mind, but all she’s going to get is a seriously long day.

Ann is mopey. She is _allowed _to be after such a long, draining day of mostly waiting around, and so what if she’s also mopey about a girl—The Girl, but, y’know—that’s just on being a lesbian. All she wants to do is eat her leftover fajitas, maybe watch some trashy tv, and get sleep. Let the day be over once and for all, she’s _done _with it.

Anne Lister is waiting on her doorstep. Sitting on the steps to her front door, composed but bundled in her coat looking as miserable as Ann feels, she looks up as soon as she hears footsteps. Hair falls into her face, slides ungracefully off her shoulders.

Her hand’s up tugging at her ear lobe before she can stop herself, the nervousness overwhelming. Here’s who she has been thinking about all day—for weeks. She looks more beautiful than ever now that it looks like she’s not trying to impress her anymore.

“You know, I told myself I wasn’t going to do this, but I started walking and now here I am.”

The urge to regress back to her high school self is supplied easily—she used to feel so anxious around Anne that it wrecked her. Didn’t get much better after the first time Anne kissed her because her heart was constantly trying to explode inside her chest. It was so easy before, _before_, but things got so messy so fast this time too.

“Get up.”

Anne does as she’s told, arms limp by her sides except for the way her thumb keeps rubbing against the side of her index finger, a nervous compulsion that she doesn’t seem aware of yet.

“Whatever it is you’re here for, whatever you’re going to say, I just—” Her long exhale shudders from the very depth of her, and everything is confusing and painful but not this, this is easy: “I just need you to hold me for a while, okay?”

Anne reciprocates the hug instantly, cradling Ann like she’s breakable—and she feels it, truth be told. She buries her head into Anne’s shoulder and lets the solid weight of the arms around her ground her, calm her. Granted, it does take a while, as requested. Minutes and minutes before her mind starts to grow quiet enough that she can hear an erratic heartbeat to match her own.

From below all the tangled, thorny emotions she unearths her voice: “I tried really hard not to miss you.”

The hands on her back grow firmer, the one dangerously low on her back somehow melting at least half the tension out of her, digits burning an anchoring line into her gravitational point. “I missed you too.”

Anne smells nice. She’s warm, too, and her coat’s soft and the buttons only poke a little bit. Ann could stay cocooned in this embrace for a small or medium-length eternity, but she peels out of it eventually, feeling only a little self-conscious.

“Your turn to—” Words. She’s not good with them. She makes a vague gesture in hopes that it’s enough to convey her meaning and leaves it at that. And voicing what she’s thinking, hoping, would just be too revealing.

It’s not her turn to bare herself.

“Right.”

They spend some time looking at each other. Anne’s eyes on her makes electricity vibrate inside her skull, the buzz coalescing behind her ears. It’s impossible to deny that after everything, she still wants Anne like she has never wanted anything or anyone in her life.

But there’s also still that creeping, lingering coldness of old memories and hurt she thought she had buried.

“Right, so.” Anne’s mouth closes. She thinks on it, and Ann watches the remnants of her arrogance melt away from her features. She is so _open _right now, so readable, that it just makes things harder for Ann, because she didn’t actually expect to ever get to this place with Anne opening herself up like this.

Her hopes have been lit to exhaustion, she thought, but here they are.

“I did a lot of thinking while you were gone. I—really want to apologize for how I’ve treated you in the past, but more than that, I want to show you that it’s different now, that I—”

That _you_…?

Anne continues, “But that’s not for me to decide. You’re the one who gets to decide what you want, and I’ll listen. If you never want to see me again, I’ll pack up my bags and leave. If you never want to speak to me again, I won’t try to convince you otherwise.”

“Alright,” Ann mumbles. “Then I decide you stick around Halifax.”

“Yeah?”

“I meant it when I said I wanted to be your friend, Lister, and trying to sort through it all away from you has been hell, so.” She heads for her apartment, gently shoving Anne aside with her shoulder, and doesn’t look back when she says, “I’ll see you around.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing all of you still sticking with the story warmed my heart so much. Thank you, I am forever grateful!

They do see each other around. It’s awkward for a while, their easy rapport shattered between them in the light of feelings and transgressions, but before long they’re back to chatting easily, all the time. Ann hasn’t been ready to go back to movie nights just yet, but they’re known to grab breakfast or lunch together at least once a week, and Anne always stops by to say good night when she gets to leave for the day.

It’s also not unusual for her to have a small bouquet of flowers in tow, a cheesy habit that was bound to stick when Ann colored as red as the roses the first time. They’re usually pretty close to wilting (though she still appreciates the gesture), so she has quite the collection of pressed flowers now.

She has been thinking of framing some of them to adorn the back room with, since its walls are so very bare.

Ann is sitting behind the counter, slouched over her tablet, slaving away at some mock-ups of an intrinsic design someone’s paying her a pretty penny to ink next week. Harriet left early, so it’s her music that’s blaring from the tinny speakers now, an old playlist with a lot of Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance because it’s been a _ day _.

When she looks up, she is not surprised to find Anne has snuck in noiselessly, looking dashing in a dusky blue cable-knit sweater with its collar framing her impressive jawline, snow blowing in around her, a bundle of differently-colored orchids in her hand.

“I need to ask you something.”

Ann puts her tablet to sleep and steeples her fingers before her, nodding towards her friend. “Go for it.”

“I want you to tattoo me.”

“No.” The answer is instant, because Ann _ feels _ it’s just not a good idea. “I—Anne, since when do you even _ want _a tattoo?”

Anne comes closer, so that only the counter is between them anymore, the flowers between them. And she knows what they mean—remembers it as soon as she looks at them. These were her aunt’s favorites. Shibden Hall’s garden used to be full of them.

“Weird thing, but I’ve grown quite fond of them since I started hanging out with you.” Anne looks at her poignantly while putting a hand on her wrist, squeezing gently. “I want to have her with me. Something to remember her by for the rest of my life.”

Ann hops off her chair, shaking her head, hair bouncing around her. It has faded to an almost pastel pink by now. It’s not as distracting as it usually is. “Do you realize—why are you asking _ me _ this? I would be marking you forever. Is this your way to—I can’t, Anne.”

She can’t even explain herself; it hits her that hard.

Anne steals up on her, wraps an arm around her from behind to keep her still, contained. To keep her from pacing, facing away. “I _ trust _you, is why.”

Ann shakes out of the grip to wheel on Anne, prods a finger into the soft wool of her sweater about where she expects her sternum to be. “Do you realize that _ I _ will be the one marking you forever? _ Me _ ? That’s something you can’t ever erase, not properly, not easily. I do this, that’s—it’s a connection. It’ll be a _ thing _.”

Anne clasps her hand around Ann’s, holds it against her chest. “I don’t want anyone else to do it. Please?”

“You are a menace, Anne Lister.”

“So you’ll do it?”

Ann rolls her eyes and returns to her seat. “I guess I will.”

* * *

“Take your shirt off.”

Anne winks as she obeys. Her skin is winter pale, the curve of her hips more pronounced than in her high school days, and Ann has to swallow because she didn’t get to look at Anne properly when they fucked and now here she is on display for her.

Her ribs aren’t very pronounced, but that layer of fat will keep this from hurting like a bitch.

“C’mere.”

Ann drags the other woman closer by the waist, angling her so that the right side of her body faces towards her. The sports bra Anne is wearing is stretchy but firm; she tests it by running a finger underneath the edge, and her cheeks flush red as she mumbles, “Think you might have to take this off too.”

Of all the fucking places she could have chosen.

Ann goes looking for her professionalism when she turns her back to Anne and gathers everything she will need. The nervousness she feels rivals the first time she got to tattoo on skin, a terrifying giddiness, an absolute knowledge that what she is about to do is _ permanent _.

“Are you one hundred percent sure, Anne?”

But when she turns around, Anne has already climbed onto her chair and draped herself across, topless, smirking. Ann bites down on her bottom lip for all of two seconds before snapping out of it, because _ jesus _.

She pulls on a fresh pair of black nitrile gloves, lets them snap against her skin with a satisfying _ thwack. _ “I just want to reiterate that this is _ permanent _. So, if you have any doubts—”

“Walker. Come get your hands on me.”

The zone comes to her as soon as she wipes down Anne’s side with rubbing alcohol, preparing her canvas as it were. The design is applied to the skin, the stencil paper peeled away, and she looks intently at the blueish-purple lines now etched on her.

“Is it good like this?”

“Yeah, perfect.”

Ann looks at her _ client _, because that’s what she is, never mind this is the first woman she has ever loved—and still loves so deeply, so achingly—and being this close to her is nine kinds of agony, while getting her ink caps ready, a cup of water poured, needles unpacked. “I need you to be as relaxed as possible, okay? Can you take a deep breath for me?”

Poised above drawn lines, watching her breathe in, Ann waits one moment longer, but then the gun buzzes against her palm and she drills the first line into Anne’s skin, a straight line across the ribs.

She smiles when she feels a hand settle on her back, but she doesn’t look up from her design, the stylized orchid inside a geometrical triangle, no embellishments, clean and simple.

Her ears are attuned only to Anne’s soft little breaths—the intakes of breath, the stuttered inhales. She tattoos and then wipes, shifts her hands, continues. After a while she becomes aware of the way the side of her hand and wrist is pressed up against her breast, but there is nothing sexual about it, while being probably the most intimate they have ever been together.

She pauses every once in a while to let Anne breathe. The whole area is red from the abuse it has taken, the continuous poking of a needle into her, but her skin is handling it pretty well.

“How’s the pain?”

Anne has her other arm tucked behind her head as if she’s merely here to lounge, she looks that relaxed. That naked, open, absolute _ faith _in her shakes several things loose inside of her. “It’s alright. Remember when I broke my clavicle in junior year? That shit hurt more.”

She could never forget. Ann had never been so worried in her life than when she heard they’d rushed Anne out of school to take her to the hospital. It had registered that her brother had been with her at the time, though only minimally, since he was fine while Anne was not.

“Are you good to continue?”

A tight nod, and despite her bravado, some apprehension glittering. She can say what she want, but Ann knows bodies very well—maybe even better than high school womanizer Freddy ever did. There’s been pain.

Ann retraces the lines she has already done and hears Anne wince audibly a few times, the sensitive places taking it a lot less smoothly than unbroken skin, but they power through, together. The lines solidify. She switches tools to start the shading, which is an entirely new kind of pain, and again to add a few dashes of watercolor purple that bleeds outside the lines.

“It’s done.” There is a gravity to her voice, a finality, and she doesn’t meet Anne’s eyes as she peels off her gloves and starts putting her equipment away. It’s_ done _.

Shuffling, a thump, and Anne’s walking to the mirror to admire the art piece now adorning her side. It’s stretched from her bottom rib to just beneath her breast, a dark flower bloomed from her grief. There’s two dates hidden among the petals.

When Ann finally feels like she can handle it, she looks up to find her friend admiring herself with tears in her eyes, a few sliding quietly down her cheeks.

“It’s perfect, Ann.”

It is. Anne really was _ made _ for tattoos—long-limbed, possessing a natural grace, there is something so goddamned _ right _about it. Even if there’s still anxiety that she permanently left her handiwork on Anne, there’s also… Pride. Happiness. A feral, territorial possessiveness.

It's fucking _ hot _.

She’s not sure what she would have done if they weren’t interrupted at that very moment by Harriet knocking on the door and then peeking her hand in. “I’ve got a visitor for you. Do you know when you’ll be done here?”

“Ah, shit, gimme like ten. Anne, can you come back here?”

Standing in front of her, with a still very topless Anne looking up at her, she applies a thin layer of petroleum over her ribs. The first bleeding has begun, blood and excess ink dribbling down, but the piece still looks really fantastic. She can’t wait to see the healed result.

“Keep this on for three hours, mkay? Then, with clean hands, you can clean the area with water and fragrance-free soap. Try not to let the water hit it directly, and keep it out of the sun.” With her tongue between her teeth, she applies the wrap carefully, packing it in tight, edge of her thumb brushing against breast again—this time she’s quite a bit more distracted by it.

“And if you have any questions or concerns, call me.”

She runs her fingers along Anne’s hairline, sweeping strands of free-falling hair behind her ears. “You did magnificently.”

“I was in good hands.”

Anne puts her shirt back on and pockets her bra, definitely paying close attention to the way she holds her arms now, carries herself. They make their way back into the shop to find none other than Eliza Priestley waiting for them, seeming very pleased to find Anne here as well.

“Oh, good, wonderful. I have your invitations for Halifax’ annual Christmas Party right here.” She pointedly looks at Anne when handing hers over, and Ann has to stifle a giggle at the absolute death glare Eliza receives in return. “Don’t forget to RSVP, will you?” And with that, she’s out of the door again, leaving only slight annoyance and a waft of perfume behind.

“There’s very few things I want less in life than to go to a party with Eliza Priestley,” Anne scoffs, making as if to tear the envelope in half—Ann puts a hand on her wrist to stop her.

“Think about it like this: you can get drunk for free.”

Anne wraps her left arm around Ann’s shoulders and grins down at her. “Well, when you put it like _ that _.”


	14. Chapter 14

The satin dress clings to every dip and curve of her body. Ann looks at herself in the floor-length mirror, wondering if it’s too much for a party hosted by Eliza Priestley, worrying her lip between her teeth. It’s probably way too much, actually.

But she can’t even entertain the thought of taking it off again. She likes how the feminine garment contrasts sharply with the tattoos that cover her arms, the scarlet red against her pale complexion.

She tries not to wonder how Anne will react to her, but it’s definitely a persistent thought. Shimmying her hips, she watches the light dance across the shifting of the fabric, and yeah, there’s going to be some looks, she’s sure.

Her time’s almost up, so she hurries through putting on equally red lipstick and spraying some perfume into her cleavage, scours her closet for a jacket that isn’t some ungodly funky color that clashes with her dress, and is outside by Anne’s second honk.

“Calm down, Lister,” she shouts as she jogs across the road and climbs into the passenger seat. “Let a girl get pretty, won’t you?”

There’s a witty retort—Ann can _see _it, can practically see the words growing behind that grin—but it dies on her tongue. Anne looks at her—slows down her crawling gaze, lets it become languid, and _fuck_, Ann doesn’t have a witty retort for that, either.

Warmth burrows in her gut.

“You look beautiful.”

“Thank you.” She takes in all of Anne in response, her maroon dress shirt tucked neatly into dark slacks but with the top two buttons undone, a thin golden chain looped around her neck. Ann hasn’t seen that one before. There’s also a really nice, reasonable wide ring on her thumb that’s new too. “When did you get the bling?”

The car pulls out of her street slowly, turning a corner before gaining some speed. “Ah, I went back to London the other day. To get the rest of my stuff.”

Something happens to Ann in that moment that takes a while to register. They keep talking the entire way to Lightcliffe, and she’s present… _ish_, but—something that was frayed has snapped. Anne went back to get the rest of her stuff? What does that _mean_?

She cuts Anne off right in the middle of her sentence, asking, “So you’re staying then? In Halifax?”

Anne looks at her like she’s silly—she feels a little silly, and a little light-headed, and for some reason, a little panicked. “Yeah, I thought that was obvious. I cleared out the apartment so I could rent it out, and so I could finally have all my books with me.”

Good, okay. Anne is staying. Anne is staying in Halifax, indefinitely.

All this time, and it has been _months _now since she’s been back, it had felt like a temporary thing now—she only fully realizes it now that she needs to recalibrate it in her head.

Anne is _staying_.

“Are you alright, Ann?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m marvelous.” She adjusts the strap of her dress to sit higher up on her shoulder, runs her thumb into the smooth fabric to steady herself. “Can’t wait to see what Eliza’s cooked up this year.”

What Eliza has cooked up this year is a bombastic affair. About half of Halifax’ ‘elite’—politicians, community pillars, shop owners, the local newspaper editors—have congregated in and around the manor, mingling in groups that don’t exist on a regular day.

There’s long tables laden with food, waiting staff with trays walking around, three separate bars—one of which is outside, with braziers providing enough heat to stand the December cold.

It’s the perfect kind of night for this: clear, starry, cold but not quite biting.

At least a dozen Christmas trees have been decorated for the occasion, shining like a thousand watts, in the gardens and in the polished rooms and in the spacious entrance hall.

Ann loves Christmas, but she doesn’t love it quite this decadently.

Eyes latch onto her inked skin, the big holes in her ears, the piercings that shimmer in the fairy lights. She usually ignores situations like these—she hasn’t been to one of these parties in _ages_, because of the small-town mentality—but Anne links their arms together and pulls her close. That only makes the looks worse, but she finds herself grinning despite it.

Anne leans down by her ear, breathes against her, and it takes a beat to register the sound as the words, “Want a drink?”

“Fuck yeah.”

They find seats far removed from as many guests as they can, a table in the corner underneath a weird cluster of baubles strung up with fishing thread. Anne’s hand crawls onto her knee, bunching up the satin a bit. “Relax.”

She tips her first swallow of spiced rum into her mouth. “Stop looking at me like I’m going to blow a fuse,” she mutters, low and rumbly, looking at her companion from the corner of her eye. “I’m _fine_.”

“Ouch. And here I thought I was looking at you like you were the prettiest girl in the room.” She turns her palm upwards and makes a grabby hand motion, so Ann reluctantly, rolling her eyes, slides her hand home.

It feels right. The roiling of her stomach has nothing to do with the strength of her drink. It succeeds beautifully in getting her to smile.

* * *

By the time the evening starts to wind into chaos, Ann is absolutely hammered. She has been giggly for a while now, laughing at everything Anne has to say, her legs draped over her lap like it doesn’t matter, the two of them squeezed onto a garden bench.

Anne is not as smooth as she thinks she is, tripping over her words sometimes, getting ahead of herself, losing herself in side tangents. There’s a lot of dragging her finger against her glass in an utterly sinful movement. She’s at least a little drunk too.

Her head lolls onto Anne’s shoulder as her laughter trails off into a hiccup. Everything’s loose and fuzzy, the edges of her body shimmered out of existence. She’s more aware of Anne’s body than her own; every place where they’re pressed together, the hand that’s been low on her thigh for almost an hour now.

Ann has been fighting with herself not to notice, but she gets stuck on so many little things that drive her crazy. The way those intense eyes glitter with mischief. The arch of her eyebrow when she teases Ann, her tongue held between her teeth when she tries not to laugh. Sometimes that tongue comes out to wet her lips and the sight of it reruns itself inside her mind until she shakes out of it.

She became aware of her throbbing arousal two drinks ago, more visceral than she has ever felt anything. That’s probably the point in time where she should have cut herself off, but with Anne sliding their fingers together every time she brings new drinks, it is hard to say no.

“Hey, Ann? Ground control to Major Tom.” Fingers are snapped in front of her eyes, slender and sure fingers, fingers that stir memories awake of when they touched her so surely. Her eyelashes flutter rapidly as she tries to focus on them. “Shit, you’re really fucking wasted.”

One hand holds onto her shoulder, the other is held in front of her face, waving slightly.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

The fingers are a bit blurry, but the way Anne is grinning is not. Ann puts her hand around Anne’s wrist, leans forward. She can see how fucking funny Anne thinks this is, the corners of her mouth hitched so far up that her dimples are as deep as they’ll go.

She wraps her lips around the tip of one of the fingers, laps her tongue lightly against the pad. The shit-eating grin flash freezes, then melts. Mischief turns to surprise, then hunger.

Her voice is slightly slurred, a husky kind of low as Ann whispers, “Put them inside me and I’ll count.”

No sound leaves Anne, but the shape of her mouth seems formed around _holy shit_, or maybe _fuck me_, or maybe it doesn’t fucking matter when she’s looking at her like that. “You can’t just say something like that.” Anne’s eyes are a dark, hungry glare that makes everything inside Ann quiver.

“Why’s that?” she responds sweetly, licking her lips.

The hand is pulled from her grip only to clamp onto her chin, thumb and index finger pressing into her cheeks. “You know damn well why, Walker.”

The roughness fires right through her. She has full body prickles, her skin buzzing, her nerves sparking in her palms, her wrists, her chest. Heat crawls through her slowly, sticky like syrup. “But I need you,” she murmurs, trying to lean forward, “to put your hands on me.”

Anne is surprisingly fluid for being as drunk as she is, pushing Ann’s legs out of her lap and getting up one movement. “You’re drunk,” she says, without looking back at her. “I think it’s time I get you home.”

The way she shivers doesn’t seem like it’s from the cold.

There is one enticing strip of skin visible between the collar of her slate gray coat and the dark hair bunched in a low bun, and Ann’s a horny drunk lesbian, so she can’t help it—she sidles up against Anne’s back and presses her mouth to the nape of her neck.

Anne freezes against her, breath caught halfway her throat, arms trembling. One, two, three open-mouthed kisses later is when she finally shakes Ann off, resolutely.

“We’re not doing this with you white girl wasted, Walker.”

Even in her cloudy state, she can accept that a no is a no, even if she is practically vibrating with her need, even the slight brush of Anne’s body turning away from her enough to grate on her tension.

“Let me take you home?”

“Yeah, okay,” she huffs, tucking a faintly pink strand of hair behind her ear. “Your home?”

Anne looks at her, sighs with her whole chest, and shrugs. “Fine.”

The walk is pleasant, mostly because Ann gets to huddle close, and every blink has them several blocks further. Time is a molten, dripping thing—it’s not quite real, but almost tangible, stretching and whipping around them.

Shibden Hall is suddenly just _there_, a stately darkness against the clear night sky.

“Can you keep quiet? Marian and Tyler are sleeping.”

They leave their shoes and jackets in a messy heap in the entrance hall and tiptoe up the stairs, nothing but hushed breaths and Ann’s desperately swallowed giggles. The upstairs hallways are carpeted, and at least Anne’s room is far enough away that once the door closes behind them, she dares to inhale deeply again.

Without even really talking about it, they both start undressing. Ann doesn’t really have to do much more than unzip herself and be left in just her panties—soaked, ruined—shivering in the cold.

“Where are you?” Anne feels around for her and tightens her hold once her hand lands on her arm. “Here.” It’s her shirt, still warm from her body and faintly smelling like the rich cologne she’d worn. Ann slips it on easily, revels in how it falls down to her thighs.

They collide in the darkness. Shoulder-chest-hip-knees aligned, and Anne instinctively wraps her up in a strong arm to keep her from bouncing away, and Ann presses closer. Her nose is by Anne’s cheek, a slight shift and she could—chests heaving, breathing the same air, they’re locked in the tight embrace, on the verge of something dangerously alluring.

“I really can’t, Ann,” Anne breathes, shaking against her. “Not—_like this_.”

Her hand, dropped to Anne’s waist, pinches lightly. “Okay.” Feelings and arousal choke her out, but the words come out, strangled. “Tomorrow, ask me—ask me if I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“Ask me tomorrow.”

They somehow end up in bed without getting tangled again. Get comfortable, buried underneath heavy blankets. The distance between them feels unbridgeable. Ann turns onto her side, back to Anne, and hugs her knees to her chest.

It takes her forever to fall asleep.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a little treat, have the final chapter several hours earlier than I intended to post it because it's been a LONG road to get here and we finally did.

The next morning is not as brutal as she expected, but Ann still feels like crap. There are angry bees buzzing inside her skull, and there is a soreness settled deep in her limbs that she can’t explain. The previous night is a little blurry, but mostly on specifics—she remembers laughing with Anne, basically cuddling with her, trying to… Oh. _Oh_.

Cheeks reddening, she curls further into the blankets and squeezes her eyes shut.

Yeah, she definitely propositioned Anne. A few times. And got rejected too—_ouch_.

“Are you awake?” Anne’s voice is a quiet hush, but it still thunders through Ann’s raw, exposed nervous system.

She huffs her breath out. “Hm, no.”

Lips brush against her temple—rough, chapped, tantalizing. “I’m going downstairs. Text me if you need anything.”

_I need you_, she wants to say. _I’ve accepted that you’re the one that I want, despite everything, and I think you want me too, so I need you to do something about it. _Instead, she pulls the blankets over her head and goes back to sleep.

When she next wakes up, thinking doesn’t bring tears to her eyes anymore. Her headache has dwindled to a slight nuisance in the back of her head, and that’s nothing she can’t handle. She slips out of bed, only then notices she’s wearing Anne’s shirt. It doesn’t really smell like her anymore, not uniquely, but it’s still nice.

Thankfully, as she’s about to descend the stairs, she remembers there’s two whole other Listers that inhabit this house—she does up all the buttons. Tyler is nowhere to be seen, but Anne is having tea and a chat with her sister.

“Good morning,” she mumbles, her voice a little worse for wear.

Anne chuckles, lips still pressed to the rim of her cup. “Afternoon, more like.”

And sure as anything, it is past noon. _Way_ past noon.

Marian looks between the two of them, at the bare legs sticking out under Anne’s nice shirt, and immediately reaches for a set of car keys and a purse. “I should go do some last minute Christmas shopping.”

“Right, you should,” Anne echoes, grinning languidly as she watches her sister leave. “Buy me something nice.”

Over her shoulder, Marian shouts back, “You’re getting coal.”

After they’re both done giggling, Anne deadpans, “I think coal would actually be pretty cool,” and Ann dissolves into another fit.

Hiccupping, wiping at the corners of her eyes, she goes to lean into Anne’s side, stealing the cup from her hands to wrap her own around. “You should’ve woken me up,” she says between sips, savoring the Earl gray and the warmth it brings to her chest. “I could’ve been out of your hair already.”

Anne puts a hand on her face, brushes the edge of her thumb against a strand of hair. Dark eyes travel over her features, reading for—_something_? “How’re you feeling?”

How _is _she feeling? Like everything is a _lot_. Like too much. Like every one of Anne’s touches leaves a burn mark. Like she wants to be able to breathe again, but she is chained up—and not in the fun way. “Tired—of—you know. Or maybe you don’t know. I don’t know.” She guffaws drily, wryly smiling.

“Are you scared?”

She nods. Leans her cheek down harder into Anne’s palm. “Yeah. Because it _matters_, I know it does. Because I’m—” She inhales deeply, looks into brown that’s becoming increasingly clearer, more open—is that hope? Is that _hope_? “I’m so in love with you. I always have been.”

Anne swallows hard, clenches her fingers harder around the gentle curve of Ann’s cheek.

“I tried to run from it, I tried to bury it, but it always comes back and I—I’m just so scared of how _much _I feel.” Her bottom lip trembling, she looks up at Anne. “For you.”

None of that slow motion, slow inching crap—Anne twists her other hand into the front of Ann’s shirt and hauls her in, and they collide in a burst of sparks as Ann is swept up into the most breathtaking kiss of the universe. She curls her hands into Anne’s hoodie, leans up onto her toes to meet her again and again and again. It feels like coming home, if the house is on fire and that’s somehow a really good thing.

There’s tears and awe and hunger and smothered laughter. They have to stop kissing for a hot second because they’re both grinning too hard.

Sniffly, pressing her forehead to Anne’s, she asks, “Is it real this time?”

And Anne answers, “You’re the realest feeling I’ve ever had.”

They can’t stop kissing after that. Ann puts her hand on the back of Anne’s head, her fingers woven into her hair, and just gives herself over to her. She groans into her mouth when she gets pushed back against the table, and mewls when Anne’s hand goes crawling up her back underneath the shirt.

Last night’s need is reignited with a vengeance—she’s shaking on her legs, arching into Anne, letting breathy little noises slip. When Anne still doesn’t seem to get the hint, or maybe she’s just being an asshole, Ann slides her kisses down Anne’s jaw to her ear. “I need you to fuck me really hard right _now_.”

Ann is long past playing coy, dancing around what she wants. She is wet and horny and she has waited long enough.

For her honesty, she gets dragged upstairs, clumsily hurrying up the steps, then backed against the wall again, Anne’s face buried in her neck and kissing her so sweetly, so light a brush that it’s sinful.

She thought she was at capacity for how desperate she could get, but apparently there’s more.

“Anne, _please_.” It’s a growl, far in the back of her throat. She is quivering with her need, trying to grind herself against Anne’s legs, searching for _anything _at this point. Her cheeks are flushed, her mouth agape, and her noise is _there_. The halls reverberate with how she keens Anne’s name.

“You gonna count?”

She only gets to two before she is coming wildly, desperately all over Anne’s fingers.

The edge taken off, Ann can stay in the moment again. The bob of Anne’s throat beneath her lips, the warmth of her back underneath her hands, the smile pressed to her hairline. Somehow they make it to Anne’s room, into her bed. Clothes get discarded. Shoulders, cheeks, throats are lavished with kisses.

Ann starts kissing down Anne’s chest as soon as the hoodie’s off, the skin stretched taut when Anne leans back on her palms. She goes a little crazy seeing the healed tattoo, nails scratch deeply into Anne’s back to keep herself from biting into it, because fuck, _fuck_.

Kneeling on the ground, she drags Anne to the edge and starts kissing the insides of her thighs, sucking, biting. Her teeth scrape so close to pussy that Anne’s hips jump slightly up to meet her face. She looks up to find Anne so deeply blushing that it drips down to the tops of her shoulders and the front of her chest.

Light floods in through the opened curtains, illuminating just how Ann buries her head between Anne’s thighs to lap at her sex, suck on her clit, and grin while she comes.

Ann climbs into Anne’s lap and clings onto her like a spider monkey, because for all that she’s three degrees past happiness, she is so tired—so deeply bone tired that she just wants to cry for a bit and then sleep for ten hours. But the way Anne’s fingers are trailing over her back, how she is dropping the sweetest little kisses against her shoulder, that’s pretty nice.

“Do you want to just sit for a bit?”

She nods into Anne’s neck. Her eyes are closed and she’s so content just to breathe in the slightly musky, sweaty smell rising from Anne, to listen to her steady breathing and the barely audible rustle of wind outside.

What a mess her life has been. Years and years and years she has had all these feelings, and now—oh, _now_.

“I could sleep like this,” she says, although with her cheek squished into Anne’s shoulder, it comes out more like “I cou’ sleeph li’ this”.

“You can. I’ll stay put.”

She didn’t actually mean it, but with the gentle rubbing on her back, it doesn’t take long before she accidentally drifts off anyway, cradled in Anne’s arms. The tiredness has receded a smidge when she blearily blinks away an unknown amount of time later to Anne’s mouth under her jaw.

“Sorry, couldn’t help myself,” is whispered into her skin. Ann bucks forward, fists her hand in Anne’s hair, and presses her face deeper into her neck. “Don’t apologize.”

It’s a little embarrassing, the way she’s rutting, and she almost stops when Anne puts a hand on her lower back to help her gain more friction and fuck, fine, whatever—she mewls against Anne’s throat as she forcefully rubs herself to orgasm against her stomach.

“We’re not leaving this room today, are we?” Anne asks, chuckling, running her fingers lightly through Ann’s hair.

She shakes her head, smiling, red in the face and a little winded. “Nope.”

* * *

When Anne does leave for a couple of minutes to get them some water and to check if Marian hasn’t returned without them noticing, Ann leaves their twisted nest of sweat-soaked sheets to snoop around. She almost doesn’t recognize her reflection in the mirror—with the worst case of sex hair ever, pale skin marked fiercely, and an expression of utter, undiluted happiness on her face, she looks like no version of herself she has ever seen.

“Don’t you have _any _sex toys?” she says when she hears footsteps nearing, trusting that Marian wouldn’t come this near to her sister’s room without announcing herself. “I thought you went back to London for your things?”

Anne leans into the doorframe, grinning down at where she’s sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Why would I need toys when I got you screaming with only one finger just now?”

Ann ignores that, shaking her hair behind her shoulders flippantly, because Anne is just abusing the fact she’s been horny for weeks to be smug. “I’m really surprised you don’t even have a strap-on. I totally thought you were the type. But that’s fine, now I know what I can get for Christmas.”

“Aw, you want to ride my cock that bad?”

She smirks up at Anne. “Babe, when did I ever say I was getting it _for you_?”

* * *

No one really bats an eye when Ann and Anne go from hand-holding, bickering, laughing best friends to hand-holding, bickering, laughing, but then sometimes kissing girlfriends. It’s so natural that the only real difference between how they were before and how they are now is that they have sex pretty much every time they’re left alone for more than two minutes.

They do Christmas at Shibden Hall, have a blast cooking up a meal for the three Listers and their tattooed, foul-mouthed, punk ass new addendum. Ann and Tyler get on like a safe for work house on fire, spending most of the evening on their stomachs on the floor building the International Space Station with Legos he got from his aunt.

“We could rig some thread through this and hang it up in your room,” Ann muses aloud, balancing the half-finished station above their heads. Tyler nods so enthusiastically his curls bounce along with him.

She catches the absolute tender way Anne is looking at her and her heart just about burns a hole through her chest.

New Year’s Eve is just the two of them on the roof of Ann’s apartment building, watching fireworks and making out, and that’s perfect too.

It catches her off-guard the first time that old hurt and melancholy wrap around her again. Things have been going so well, she barely dwells on the past anymore.

She’s in the passenger seat of Anne’s car, the heat cranked up to toasty. They’re driving around Halifax with bags of groceries in the trunk and a cheesy playlist playing from one of their phones, and Anne has had her hand on Ann’s knee the entire time except for very briefly when she needed to make a sharp turn.

There’s a sandy blanket in the back seat from when they decided to go to the beach the other day. One of Ann’s scarves is draped around the back of Anne’s chair. The only plans they have for the night are home-cooked pasta and continuing the Netflix show they started that Ann adores and Anne tolerates because of how it makes Ann’s eyes glitter, apparently—poetic asshole, her girlfriend.

She looks sideways at Anne Lister in profile, relaxed, smiling, as dashing as that first time she trudged through the front door behind John Walker and greeted her with that cocky half-grin, though grown so much—and she thinks that maybe taking the extremely long, bumpy way around was all worth it to arrive here.

* * *

**THE END**

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The biggest shoutout in the world and all my love to Sheepy for being the best. And thank you to all of you who stuck with me all this time, I will not forget it.


End file.
